


Partners

by EmperorNortonII



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-12 07:43:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 33,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmperorNortonII/pseuds/EmperorNortonII
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris's relationship with Jill has always been complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1996

**Author's Note:**

> Not exactly a "Valenfield" fic; more of a "how would it work if...?" sort of deal.
> 
> The first twenty-two chapters (when I put it like that it sounds much longer than it is) originally appeared on AFF.net.
> 
> Set in the same "continuity" as my other story, "Identity."

_Think of the first time you slept with someone, or the first time you fell in love: that blinding explosion that left you crackling at the fingertips with electricity, initiated and transformed. I tell you that was nothing, nothing at all, beside the power of putting your lives, simply and daily, into each other's hands._  
— Tana French, _In the Woods_

* * *

"Don't," Barry Burton says.

Chris Redfield, age 23, looks at him strangely. He's _met_ Barry's wife, so his first thought is, if articulated, _Did the married guy just call dibs?_

Barry chuckles, like he can read Chris's mind. "First off, that's probably your new partner."

Chris stares at him, then back at Jill Valentine, who's across the room in Chief Irons's corner office, talking to him and Wesker. She's short, with piercing blue eyes and no makeup, wearing a smart black pantsuit and looking like a runway model. He'd figured she was a lawyer, or some intern from City Hall here to give Irons a hard time.

Their squad will get their own office eventually, as per Wesker's request, but right now they've got the same desks as anyone else in the department. A lot of the cops in the building are finding reasons to be in here right now, and some have completely abandoned pretense and are openly leering.

"She would have been one of the youngest Special Forces operatives in history," Barry says, "and one of the first women. She's not to be messed with."

"She's like the Hollywood version," Chris says, slowly shaking his head. "What the hell is somebody like that doing here?"

"DADT."

He snaps his head around to stare at Barry, who grins and spreads his hands.

"They asked," he says, "and she told." Barry leans back in his chair. "I sat in on Wesker's entrance interview. She's pretty good."

Chris nods.

"What, you don't believe me?"

"I think I'm gonna have to talk to her first."

* * *

"What do you think about this job?" Jill asks him.

They've got a corner booth at J's Bar. He's in a bomber jacket that used to be his dad's and a pair of new blue jeans; she's still in the pantsuit from her interview. Chris has known her for thirty minutes.

Up close, it's easier to believe she's military. It's in how she moves, and in the crispness with which she speaks. Jill strikes him as someone who pays very close attention to the image she's presenting.

"I get the feeling we're part of somebody's reelection campaign," Chris says, and takes a bite of his burger. "The rest of the team's a bunch of ex-Marines and SEALs and God knows what else. It's less like a cop squad and more like we're here to invade the next town over."

"So we're proof of a zero-tolerance policy?"

"That's what I'm thinking, yeah. I doubt we'll do any real work."

She has a spoonful of clam chowder, which visibly surprises her.

"Good?"

"Yeah, very. I wasn't expecting that." Jill looks down into the bowl.

"It's a jog from the station," Chris says, "and their beer selection's lousy. Worth it, though."

"Yeah." Jill eats some more chowder. "What'd they tell you about me?"

Chris puts his burger down and swallows carefully. "DADT."

Jill nods and winces. "That's it?"

"Well, that and that you're a badass."

That gets half a grin out of her. Jill shoots a quick glance across the room, then turns back to him.

"Look, I don't have a problem with gay people," Chris says. "Lesbians are just women with really good taste."

"I'm not a lesbian," Jill says. "At least, I don't think I am. I'm just... I picked a bad time to be attracted to a woman."

"Well, what'd they tell you about me?" Chris asks.

"That you were kicked out of the Air Force for being," she pauses, visibly translating what she'd actually been told, "difficult."

"So there you go. You kissed a girl, big deal." Chris puts out his hand, the one that isn't greasy from the burger. "I'm a fuckup and we'll be working together. Nice to meet you."

Jill looks down at his hand, then back up at him, and shakes it. "Yeah. Here's hoping, right?"

"Right."


	2. Awareness

Two years later, he feels like he's known her all his life.

They've developed an operational awareness of one another that borders on telepathy. Chris is a natural point man, the first into a fight and often the last out, prone to causing property damage and too damn stubborn to die. Jill's official role on the team is bomb disposal, but she seems to know a little bit about most things and she has a knack for going unnoticed. In the field, it's a sensible partnership; Chris causes distractions and she exploits them.

This comes in handy, because Chris turns out to be dead wrong about the STARS. Raccoon City is some kind of statewide magnet for militias, cults, overzealous protest groups, and the occasional genuine terrorist, which usually means some backwoods asshole with a big sack of fertilizer. They stay busy and they score some real wins, and for a guy who managed to dick himself out of a career as a fighter pilot, it feels good. He's found something he can excel at, and a team in which he feels like he belongs, and it's at least in part because of Jill Valentine backing him up.

He takes her out for a beer a couple of times a week. Chris doesn't ask about her personal life and she doesn't volunteer many details, but he sometimes sees her with other women, before or after work, or when he runs into her in a bar. It's easy to tell when she's dating a girl as opposed to just hanging out with one, because Jill's first reaction when he sees her with the former is to act like she's been caught doing something illicit. She gets over that so quickly that nobody else would catch it, but Chris does.

There's a dumb part of him that really wants to ask her about it, really wants her to go over her relationship history in slow glorious detail with visual aids and a reading list, but Chris keeps a tight lid on that. She's his partner and the last thing he needs is to piss her off.

Then it's July of 1998, and Irons taps them to investigate the Raccoon Forest murders.

* * *

Two days later, the Spencer mansion blows up, taking the Tyrant, Wesker, Lisa Trevor, most of the STARS team, and most of their evidence with it.

Chris sits in their helicopter, slumped in his seat, looking at the pillar of smoke as it recedes into the distance. He's got a lot of things in his head just then, which are colliding together and creating an effect like white noise. He's exhausted, relieved, terrified, thinking about throwing Vickers out of the fucking helicopter, you name it.

He has a few photos and papers stuffed into his vest, but his hopes aren't high. He's been a sort-of cop for long enough that he knows when even a shitty lawyer's going to be able to kick big holes in a case, and Umbrella's got money to burn. Chris knows he has to do something about this, but right at that moment, he has no idea what.

Barry sits across from him, feeding fresh rounds into his .44 (that gun no longer looks like the overcompensation mechanism that Chris once thought it did) and looking like he's aged ten years in the last hour. Rebecca's curled up on the seat next to Barry in the fetal position.

Jill fell asleep on his shoulder about ten seconds after the mansion exploded. It's something she's done maybe three times before, when they were riding home safe after a particularly close call. Jill's beautiful when she's sleeping, and he always feels... honored, he supposes, that she's comfortable enough with him to let her guard down.

It also means that he can't really move or he'll wake her up, and he's fine with that. It lets him relax, if only because he doesn't have a choice, and the adrenaline rush he's been living on all night finally begins to subside. It's a long flight back to Raccoon City.


	3. Post-Incident

The RPD's locker rooms are still under construction in the basement, so once he gets home, the first thing Chris does is run to the shower. His exposed skin is filthy with smoke, sweat, shredded tissue, and dried blood, some of which has hardened into a black crust. It feels like death crawling over him and it never quite feels like he gets it off, even though he scrubs until his skin's raw.

He doesn't know how he didn't catch the T-Virus and it's been bothering him. Rebecca drew his blood and says he's clean, but he isn't sure whether or not he believes that.

Chris finally gets out of the shower when it starts running cold and walks into his bedroom, wrapped in a towel. All he does is look at his bed, and the next thing he knows, he's lying facedown on the pillow and it's thirteen hours later. He only woke up because he's starving.

Chris ignores his answering machine, fixes himself a few grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches--the idea of eating any kind of meat makes him think of zombies, and nearly makes him throw up in his kitchen sink--and picks up the last three days' newspapers from his front stoop. The most recent paper's headline story is about a come-from-behind victory for the Raccoon University football team.

He reads the whole paper back to front. There's nothing in it about a massive explosion in the Raccoon Forest.

That's when he realizes, with a sensation like his spine's slowly freezing, that the fix is in.

Chris eats the sandwiches and drinks a gallon of orange juice with them, still too dumbfounded to be genuinely angry.

His doorbell rings, and Chris gets up to answer it before realizing he's still naked, which means he just gave the neighbors an eyeful. He pulls on track pants and a T-shirt that doesn't smell too bad, then opens his front door.

It's Jill, in black slacks and a short-sleeved blouse, and she looks like he feels. There are waterproof bandages wrapped around both Jill's forearms, over defensive wounds from the mansion, and another one where her neck meets her shoulder, half-hidden by the blouse's collar. She's cut a lot of her hair off, so now it falls to just past her ears, and her blink rate's way off. He knows without asking that she's seen the paper too, and he lets her into the house and locks the door behind her.

"So," he says, "how're you doing--"

"It was all for nothing," Jill says. "We were something to be thrown away, do you realize that? Just a resource for Wesker to cash in."

"Yeah." He looks at the floor for a second. "I've got a few things. What'd you grab?"

"A couple of journals. Nothing serious."

Chris nods. "We'll get them, Jill. I mean, some of what we saw... it's not just illegal, it's against the Geneva Convention. They're war crimes."

"It's not even them. At least, not right now it isn't." Jill walks into his kitchen. She knows where he keeps the bourbon. "I really thought this was it, Chris. I couldn't be in the Army, but at least I could be a cop, and now I find out that the whole thing was bullshit." Jill opens the cabinet below the sink and picks up the bottle.

Chris steps up behind her and puts a hand on her shoulder. "It wasn't all bullshit."

She puts a hand on top of his, then turns around. "I know."

Jill is the least physically demonstrative person on the planet, so it's a surprise when she wraps her arms around his waist. She doesn't cry, but she puts her face against his chest, and after a couple of awkward seconds, Chris puts his arms around her.

"I can't believe we lived through that," she says finally, and looks up at him.

"Yeah."

"Sometimes it just hits me," Jill says. "The zombies. The Hunters. The Tyrant. We should be dead."

"We aren't."

"No."

She takes his face in both her hands and after a second, pulls it down to hers.

It's not a kiss so much as a question. When she draws back from him again, Jill's eyes are wide open, like she's gotten lost somewhere.

"Are you sure?" Chris says. His voice has gone hoarse.

"I think I need this," Jill says. "Can you help me?"

"Sure."

* * *

"Give me one of those," Jill says.

Chris puts a second cigarette into his mouth alongside the first, lights them both, and passes one to her. She takes a drag, and it's so quiet that he can hear the sound of the ember burning the paper.

They smoke in silence for a while, sitting up in his bed a few inches apart. The windows are open and it's the last night of the full moon. Everything's a negative image, defined by moonlight against edges, and the smoke curls through the air in lazy curves. 

The word he'd use to describe what just happened was "desperate." He carried her into the bedroom, they tore each other's clothes off like animals, and then...

Chris lets out a puff of smoke. He doesn't have the words right now. He feels like he went away for a while, on a field trip to some caveman part of his brain, and now he's finding his way back.

Naked, Jill's nothing like he thought and exactly as he should've expected. She's all angles and flat planes, the muscles of her stomach and thighs defined to the point where she looks like she's carved from wood. Her hands are strong and calloused, and she's got a couple of interesting scars.

"Now I remember why I quit," Jill says, but she's almost finished the cigarette.

"Yeah. I've been trying to for a while."

She looks around, and he takes an ashtray off his nightstand and hands it to her. Jill takes one last drag, then butts out the cigarette and leans her head back, exhaling smoke towards the ceiling.

"I haven't been with a man for a few years," Jill says finally.

"I was wondering about that, yeah."

"Honestly, so was I." She looks over at him, her eyes unreadable in the darkness. "It was good, though."

"Yeah. Definitely."

It's a profound understatement, but Chris doesn't want to say as much. Intellectually, he knows that Forest and Joseph and all the rest wouldn't resent him for this in the least, but it's hard to admit to enjoying anything right now.

So he shuts up, an option which has never failed him, and finishes his cigarette. By the time he's done, Jill's fallen asleep, so he grinds out his cigarette in the ashtray and settles in for the night. Unexpectedly, Jill moves over without quite waking up and drapes herself over his chest, with one of her legs twisting around one of his like a grapevine hold. Chris freezes up for a second, then puts an arm around her shoulders, and she settles in against him with a quiet murmur of satisfaction.

This is strange, Chris thinks, but it's okay. Whatever else happens, this is okay.


	4. Therapy

She isn't there when he wakes up. His shower's been used and there's coffee made.

Chris thinks he's got an idea of how this is going to go. He'll get to work, she'll want to talk to him in private, and then she'll apologize but explain how last night was a mistake, a good memory but one never to be repeated or discussed.

That puts him in a shitty mood before he even gets in the RPD's front door, and he doubles down by spending most of the day working on his official report of the events in the mansion. He includes as much of the evidence as he can and tells the precise truth in the most clinical language he knows, but even with that, it still reads like a pulp horror novel with a conspiracy-theory twist. He drops it off in Irons's inbox with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

When he gets back to the STARS office, Jill's there, sitting at her desk. It's the first time he's seen her all day, and it takes him a second to recognize she's wearing one of his old flannel shirts. It fits her like a circus tent, but with the sleeves rolled up and a knot at the bottom, it almost looks like something of hers.

"Hey," he says finally.

"Hey."

"So. Haven't seen you."

"I was at City Hall in the archives," she says. "There's no record of there ever being a mansion in those woods. No construction permits, nothing. I even looked up George Trevor's name, and he's famous, but he vanished in the sixties."

"Fuck." He gives it some thought, but doesn't have anything useful to say beyond that. Instead, he sits down heavily in his chair and stares into space.

"Your house is a pigsty, by the way," Jill says.

Chris looks at her, surprised.

"Come to my place tonight," she says, and hands him a piece of paper with her address on it.

* * *

The next time Chris goes to work, his entire professional life turns to shit.

He'd expected that Irons would take one look at his report and send him for mandatory trauma counseling, which happens, but the report's also been leaked to both the rest of the department and the local press. When Chris sees Irons that morning, Irons is in such a good mood that Chris instantly knows the leak was deliberate. This is a violation of multiple regs and a dick move of such breathtaking magnitude that it almost cycles back around to admirable.

Chris has been known across Raccoon City as a complete lunatic of dubious competence since about fifteen minutes before he woke up that morning, but it's not unanimous. A surprising number of guys in the department are either friendly enough with him that they give him the benefit of the doubt or they've seen something sketchy about Umbrella before now. He has a lot of conversations in dark corners over the next few days, about reports going missing or weird 911 calls.

Most of the guys he talks to consequently decide it's time to blow town. If Umbrella is dirty, the reasoning goes, then Raccoon City is dirty, and there's no point staying here. It's a solid call and he doesn't fault a single person who makes it, but every cop who goes is one less person in his corner.

Chris, Jill, Barry, and Rebecca go to the funerals for the STARS members, constricted and uncomfortable in their dress blues, and watch families bury empty coffins and urns. Chris has a lot of awkward conversations with parents, spouses, siblings, and children, most of whom have heard some part of his version but are assuming they heard it wrong. There are already a lot of quiet lies and understatements on the death reports (Richard Aiken: "multiple stab wounds"), and in the end, Chris just stops trying to tell the truth. He's as vague as possible, tells grieving people that their loved ones died bravely or honorably but not exactly how, and leaves every one of the funerals wanting to puke his guts out.

* * *

The RPD's counselor is clearly starting from the assumption that he's section-eight, where the best-case scenario is that he got dosed with bad acid right before he spent the night running around in the woods. Chris can see why, since he is of necessity babbling about zombies, lizard monsters, and international conspiracies, but the counselor's just not listening and that means she's useless.

What keeps him sane in the weeks after the mansion incident is Jill, and that's about it.

On the first few nights they spend together, they go straight to Jill's bedroom the moment he's through the door and don't leave until the next time one of them has to be at the precinct house. It takes him a while to figure out why, particularly since Jill seems to think he should know already. When he finally gets it, he feels like a moron for not getting it sooner. It's about proving they're still alive, to themselves and to each other, and this is the best way they know how. This is the most alive they know how to feel.

He learns a lot about Jill. She isn't that different behind closed doors, but she laughs and smiles more readily in private, and is fond of touching him on the arm or shoulder to emphasize a point. She hates being treated like she's fragile, and in bed she acts like the smallest guy in the mosh pit, coming back at him with almost violent force until he learns she can take whatever he has to give. She makes little angry sounds when he's inside her like she can't believe he's got the balls to be doing this to her, and he soon learns to recognize that as a sign that he's doing something right. She likes gourmet tea and black comedies; she's awful at keeping track of her keys, because she doesn't actually need them; when she's tired or drunk or asleep, she wraps herself around him like a cat.

They're both still bleeding. There are a lot of almost random little things that can put Chris back in crisis mode without warning: tree branches tapping on windows, watching people eat barbecue, off-tempo footsteps on hardwood floors. He often reacts before he consciously processes what he's reacting to, and is then forced to explain why he's standing by the nearest door with his gun in both hands, halfway between fight and flight.

The late movie one Saturday night is _The Creature From the Black Lagoon_. When the titular creature comes onscreen for the first time, it looks just enough like a Hunter that Jill instantly throws her drink at the television set. It's a whiskey glass with a heavy base and it goes straight through the screen with a crackling explosion. Chris doesn't even move, and when Jill realizes what she's done, she looks at him sheepishly and they share an awkward chuckle.

They both have nightmares, naturally. Jill claims she doesn't remember hers, but at a glance, they're all chase scenes. She always kicks the sheets off the bed and once or twice a night, she wakes up suddenly, clutching at her throat and breathing in big ragged gasps. Chris has to talk her down from those, holding her in both arms and speaking softly until the adrenaline wears off.

Chris's are more surreal: Wesker returning to work at the RPD like it's any other day with four puncture wounds through his chest that are big enough to see through, casual conversations with friends or acquaintances who don't notice the slow gray rot creeping up their bodies, parts of the RPD or the city transformed into spider nests or overgrown with fat green vines. They're the kind of nightmare that doesn't register as such until a couple of minutes after they wake him up. At that point, Chris moves closer to Jill and holds her a little tighter.

It's slow, but they're there for each other, and it gets better.


	5. Resignation

Towards the end of August, it's been a little over three weeks since the "mansion incident" and there's been no investigation into the Spencer estate, which means there won't be one at all. Ozwell Spencer himself only seems to exist on paper, and the explosion that destroyed the mansion should've been reported by a dozen different sources but wasn't. They have no idea how to get back to the mansion on foot or by road, and there's no way to get access to one of the RPD's helicopters with Irons on the warpath. Umbrella has closed most of their local offices for renovation or maintenance, with full vacation pay for most of their employees, and all their executives are summering somewhere conveniently distant.

The official word on the STARS team is that it was a failed experiment, which will require new personnel and substantial reorganization if it can be made to work at all, and the deaths of Joseph Frost and the Bravo team are dropped without ceremony into the cold case file.

At this point, Rebecca quietly disappears. When Chris goes to her apartment, it's locked up and empty. She's left no forwarding address and her last paycheck is never cashed. She's just gone, and when he stops to think about it, he can't blame her.

Both he and Jill keep working on a case against Umbrella, quietly interviewing construction workers, file clerks, and ex-Umbrella staff. One of the retired dispatchers is happy to tell them about call records she's had to destroy, and a couple of employees of one of the city's cleaning services have a lot to say about secret rooms and subbasements throughout several public buildings. They both independently run across an anonymous whistleblower online, who's put together an impressive chart that compares the rate of mysterious deaths and disappearances in an area that has a major Umbrella facility with an area that doesn't. It's like the old joke about how there are fewer stray cats in a neighborhood that has a Taco Bell; it's possible to track Umbrella's progress across the civilized world by looking for a spike in missing-persons reports and a sharp decline in the local homeless population.

None of this makes an impact on Irons, who stonewalls them every chance he gets. Chris has always thought of Irons as a blowhard, the kind of guy who's just good enough at backroom dealing and ass-kissing that he can effectively fail upwards. It becomes obvious that much is true, but Irons has connections Chris couldn't have guessed at. A lot of leads suddenly evaporate on either Chris or Jill, and Irons isn't shy about obliquely letting them know that he's the one who did it.

In the end, frustrated and almost nauseous with repressed anger, Chris gives Irons exactly what he's looking for. On August 24th, he puts his resignation on Irons's desk and follows it up with a fifteen-minute stream-of-consciousness rant concerning Irons's competence, intelligence, penis size, weight problem, absurdly pretentious art collection, sexual behaviors, personality disorders, tendency to berate his secretaries, and personal hygiene. He never repeats himself and barely pauses to breathe.

By the end of it, Irons looks like he's about to have a coronary, Barry looks embarrassed, Jill does not give a fuck and is openly laughing, and the hallway outside Irons's office is crowded with cops listening in. Chris finally pushes his way out through the crowd and feels really good about the whole thing right up until he gets out of the building.

That's when it hits him. He's twenty-five years old and so far, he's gotten thrown out of the Air Force and now he's pissed away a career in law enforcement. For a few minutes, he stands there looking up, wondering what he's going to do with the rest of his life.

The front door opens and Jill comes out. Without a word, she comes up next to him and slips her arm around his waist. With a faint smile, Chris puts his arm around her shoulders and they turn to walk away.

It's the last time he'll see the RPD building. Jill isn't so lucky.

* * *

"Wait, is this about--"

"No, it's not," Jill says. "Seriously."

Both of them now glance at Barry, and Barry looks back at them with a dry expression.

"You're sleeping together," Barry says. "You've been sleeping together for weeks. I know."

Of course he knows. It was stupid to think he didn't. Both Chris and Jill look at each other guiltily and adjust their posture, going from conspirators to reasonable adults.

"All right," Chris says, "then why do you want to stay here?"

Jill taps a map of Raccoon City that Chris has taped up on the wall. He's marked a specific location with pushpins, where a half-drunk construction worker mentioned some weird additions that his company was hired to make to an old sewer tunnel. "I think we need to check this out at some point. They put a lot of resources into this, from what you're telling me, and I can see a few holes in their security. I have the best chance of getting in and back out without them noticing."

"It's a risky play, Jill," Barry says.

"And going off to Europe on a hunch isn't? I think this is our best course of action," Jill says. "You guys work it from your end, and I'll work it from here."

Chris thinks about that, then turns to Barry. "Can we have a minute?"

"Sure." Barry stands up, picks up his beer, and takes it with him out into Chris's front yard.

"We're a team," Chris says to Jill, "and I don't like you being alone."

"How could you possibly help with an infiltration job, Chris?" She's calm, reasonable, and correct.

"Okay," he says, "You're a trained soldier and you're good at this. I know that, but I have to ask: this isn't about us, is it?"

"Oh, for God's sake." Jill sits down heavily on the couch. "No. I'm not volunteering to infiltrate a heavily secure illegal facility by myself because I feel guilty about sleeping with you."

"So you honestly think it's a good idea?"

"Yes!"

They stare at each other for a minute and Chris belatedly realizes that he's fucked up. There are a dozen tells Jill's got right now that he wouldn't have noticed a month ago and they all say that she's fire-and-brimstone pissed off.

"Fine," he says finally. "We'll do it your way."

"Thank you."


	6. Helpless

He's in London a little under a month later, talking with a couple of guys from Wilpharma who say they have dirt on Umbrella. Chris glances over one of their heads and the muted television in the corner of the pub says "RACCOON CITY DISASTER" on its news ticker. He cuts off the Wilpharma guys in mid-sentence and asks the bartender to turn the volume up.

It's the T-Virus, obviously. The official word at this point is "toxic waste spill," but the associated military quarantine and the declaration of martial law inside the city both indicate it's more than that. Even the talking-head newscaster looks like she can't believe what she's being asked to say.

Chris walks out of the pub without a second thought, flags down a taxi, and gets back to the tiny hotel room he's splitting with Barry. Barry's there already, in his shirtsleeves and watching the news on the room's tiny TV.

"We need to get back," Chris says. "Jill--"

Barry nods. "On it."

* * *

There is a very short list of people in 1998 who are considered "no transport," as the FBI considers them a threat to aviation. The list includes sixteen known terrorists and one Christopher Redfield, who finds out on September 24th that he is not allowed to fly into the United States on a commercial airliner. In other words, Umbrella says hello.

He's left shouting at people in a security checkpoint while Barry moves ahead, and it rapidly becomes obvious that he's both completely out of luck and about to get arrested. It's tempting to roll up his sleeves and really earn that jail cell, hospitalize some of these fucking idiots, but Chris manages to walk away.

That leaves him alone in London, watching the news intently as the Raccoon City situation continues to degenerate. The story changes rapidly and there are often slight differences in it from source to source, but it's not hard to figure out what's actually going on. The T-Virus is out, it's been a major spill, the Raccoon cops clearly can't stop it, and if Chris was in charge of doing something about it, he'd be getting ready to bomb the city flat.

In an attempt to do something worthwhile, he establishes a safehouse, then sends word of its location and existence to Barry and Jill's anonymous email accounts. Chris hooks the place up to the power grid and is there waiting for a call from Barry when a small squad of hired locals tries to kill him.

Then there's a scuffle, a brief exchange of gunfire, a knife fight, and a running brawl through most of the building and the street outside. It eventually ends when the cops catch up to them.

Chris hasn't actually done anything wrong aside from defending himself with extreme enthusiasm. He's in a cell for two days anyway, because random Yanks in the country on sketchy business firing illegal guns in a residential zone really do piss off the London police, and by the time he gets out it's October 3rd. Raccoon City is a crater. There's been no word from Jill or Barry.

The smart play at this point is to assume the worst and drop off the radar. Umbrella's already tried to kill him once and there's a strong possibility that he's completely out of allies. What trips him up is that Chris finds himself completely unable to operate on the assumption that Jill Valentine is dead. He feels like he'd know if she were, which is exactly the kind of stupid gut-instinct decision that tends to get him in trouble.

He sticks to the original plan regardless. Chris keeps talking to people and making contacts, and leaves notes in dead drops and the email account, just as if Jill will show up at any minute and come find him. He keeps doing that for two and a half months, long after it's occurred to him that he's being crazy.


	7. That Time We Blew Up Antarctica

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Yes, Carlos is actually Brazilian, but it's Chris's POV.)

Three days after the loneliest Christmas of his life, the phone rings in his hotel room.

"Chris Redfield? I'm a friend of Claire's."

He's in this hotel as Joseph Speyer. "How the hell did you get this number?"

"Claire gave it to me."

"...and how did she--?"

"Umbrella has you under surveillance," the guy on the other end of the phone says, "and apparently has for months. My name's Leon Kennedy. Your sister's in trouble."

"Start at the beginning."

Leon does, and by the end of the conversation Chris has passed through confusion to self-hatred to anger to determination. Leon's a cadet in STRATCOM and Chris still has a few buddies in the Air Force, and between them, they're able to figure out a way to get Chris to southern Argentina with a bag full of guns and enough money in his pocket to hire a boat. Chris starts packing.

* * *

Claire's in the co-pilot's seat of the Harrier and she's burst into quiet, relieved tears. Chris only has the barest idea of what's happened to her, but what he knows includes an overnight stay in post-outbreak Raccoon City and ten days as a prisoner of Umbrella. She's been through a lot and most of it's his fault for not picking up the goddamned phone.

Chris wants to dwell on that, really get his brood on, but he's a little distracted.

For one thing, now that Claire's safe, it frees him up to think about the issue of Wesker. He'd talked himself into chalking up their encounter on Rockfort to his imagination, like maybe that first punch rattled him more than he thought and the rest of it was the head trauma talking, but about an hour ago he saw Wesker take a falling I-beam to the face and get right back up. The whole world just changed on him in ways he's only beginning to process.

For another, and more importantly, Chris is about to crash this fucking plane.

Alfred Ashford's decommissioned Harrier practically flies itself, and under other circumstances, Chris would be having a lot of fun with this. It's got a lot of bells and whistles that seem to be aftermarket installations, extra systems and automated processes to make the flight easier or more pleasurable for a civilian pilot. On the other hand, he's flown it from South America to Antarctica once today already and he hasn't refueled. He probably could've done it in the Antarctic facility's hangar, but he'd been so worried about Claire at that point that it had never occurred to him.

He lets Claire weep for now and gets on the radio. He has no flight plan, no call sign, and he technically stole this plane. Chris points it in Australia's general direction and hopes for the best.

* * *

About nine hours later, Chris is sitting in an Australian naval base, the jet's sitting on an aircraft carrier, and he's decided to tell the truth. Claire's next to him, and every stern-looking official they talk to goes from blank to confused to incredulous in the same, nearly predictable order. Yes, the same international corporation that produced most of the medical supplies and toiletries in this building abducted my sister to a secret torture camp on a small island in South America, after she killed maybe twenty-five people in self-defense in their Paris offices; to be fair, she only started killing people after they pulled out the fucking _attack helicopter_ , so if you view this situation in the same calm light as I, it's their fault; yes, she got in touch with me for help then escaped to Antarctica, which was not her idea, because really, who the fuck would escape to _Antarctica_ ; yes, we caused that explosion yesterday, the one that everyone thought was a nuke for the first few hours and which probably accelerated global warming by a measurable fraction and which scared the shit out of everyone in your research station, but we had a _really good reason_.

Fortunately, this time they've both got a fair amount of hard evidence, in the form of papers and photos stolen from Rockfort and Alexander Ashford's Antarctic hideaway. They can prove a lot of what they're saying, and that means that most of the people they talk to obey an old and universal rule of law enforcement: they decide it's above their pay grade and hand the Redfields off to someone with more authority.

After thirty-six hours and maybe fifteen retellings of the same story, the U.S. ambassador to Australia comes strolling into the room, accompanied by Jill Valentine and a lanky Mexican guy Chris doesn't know. Chris instantly gets to his feet and sweeps Jill up in his arms, more enthusiastically than he'd meant to, and the Mexican guy looks upset for all of a second before he hides it.

"How'd you know?" he asks.

"I found your safehouse a few days ago. Then a guy named Leon Kennedy got in touch with me," Jill says, "and said you were here. This is Carlos." She gestures towards him with her head. "He saved my life in Raccoon City."

"A few times."

"Yes, a few times. You ass."

Chris lets go of Jill so he can shake Carlos's hand. "Hey, man. Thanks. Seriously."

"Don't mention it," Carlos says. His handshake's firm and his accent's inconsistent as hell, like he's trying to get rid of it. "The pleasure's all mine."

Chris picks up on Carlos's body language about five seconds later. He's right on the edge of Jill's personal space and Jill isn't moving. Chris puts two and two together, hides a flare of jealousy, and sits back down at the table.

"Okay," he says to the ambassador, "how much do you already know?"

* * *

"So I guess that's my sister-in-law, huh," Claire says.

Chris frowns at her.

They're in the U.S. consulate in Canberra, waiting for them to provide Claire with ID and a passport. They're both wearing loaned sweats from the naval base, they've been allowed to shower in one of the ambassadors' suites upstairs, and Claire's inhaling a submarine sandwich. Chris just has coffee.

"Oh, please." It's encouraging that Claire can make jokes at all. "It's all over your face."

"I'm pretty sure she's got something going on with that Carlos guy."

Claire gives him a look that says she cannot believe how stupid he is.

"We had a fight," Chris says, "right before I left Raccoon City. She was there, you know, probably about the same time you were."

"Leon told you about that?"

"I may have grilled him on how exactly he knew my little sister."

"Chris, I'm not _dating_ him, I--" She shakes her head furiously and holds up a hand. "Never mind. Your problem. Go."

"It's not a problem. We had a relationship, sort of, and now I guess we don't."

"She flew to Australia," Claire says slowly, "because she heard you were here. Whatever the fight was about, she clearly doesn't hold it against you."

"Look, Claire, don't worry about me. It's not a big deal."

"No. You don't get to go all weight-of-the-world on me anymore." Claire pokes him in the sternum. "When you have a problem, you need to talk to people about it instead of suffering in manly silence. Otherwise, bad things happen, like, say, your little sister getting thrown in _zombie prison_."

"I'm going to be paying for this for the rest of my life, aren't I."

"I love you, Chris, but you make the worst personal decisions of anyone, anywhere, ever." She picks up what's left of the sandwich and takes a bite. "Talk to Jill."

"I really don't think that--"

" _Zombie prison_."

"...fine."


	8. The New Job

They're at the bar in a hotel in Canberra, which makes it sound much ritzier than it is. It's a place where beer is sold that happens to share a wall with the lobby. The entire building needs a coat of paint, a good dedicated cleaning crew, or maybe an air strike, but it's cheap and that counts for a lot.

"I slept with Carlos," Jill says, "but you knew that."

"I did," Chris says. He has a draft beer. Jill has a gin and tonic.

"Raccoon City got... really bad. Apocalypse bad." She shakes her head. "Umbrella cooked this thing up, like the Tyrant but a lot smarter and faster, and they sent it into the city to kill any STARS it could find. They called it a Nemesis."

"Yeah, they tried to hit me in London at the end of September. Nothing fancy like that, though."

"Carlos stuck by me," Jill says, sipping her drink, "even with that thing breathing down both our necks. He had no reason to back me up, but he did. Barry finally got us out, one thing led to another, and..." She looks sidelong at Chris. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine," Chris says. "I don't own you."

She looks at him closely for a moment, and her face twists into a humorless grin. "Oh, for God's sake. Are you blaming yourself for this?"

"I should've fought you on that," he says. "If you'd come to Europe with us in the first place..."

"It is _not_ your fault, Chris. It was my call and I'd stand by it if I had to make it again. We couldn't have known they were going to screw the pooch again that quickly."

"Look," he says, "I can't help it. You're my partner. I'm supposed to be there when you need me, and I wasn't."

"Tell you what. You'll have another chance."

He pauses with his beer glass halfway to his mouth and looks at her.

"I've been talking with a lot of my old Army buddies," Jill says, "and we're suddenly in demand. How would you feel about going back to work for the U.S. military?"

He's trying to come up with a polite, adult way of saying "Fuck _that_ " when she nods.

"Yeah, I didn't like the idea either."

"Thank you," Chris says, relieved.

"There are a couple of other options, though. People started digging into Umbrella after Raccoon blew up, and they're finding a _lot_. There are even a couple of PMCs that are getting involved."

"Mercenaries? Seriously?"

"Kind of, but I'll be honest with you. It pays, and I could really use that."

"Yeah." He's been flying around the world on credit for three months. "Me too."

"Want me to get us in touch with them?"

"Yeah."

"All right. I'll call them once we're back in the U.S."

Chris finishes his beer. "Jill, there's one other thing."

He can see her almost sigh. "What's that?"

"Wesker's alive."

Her mental record scratches. "...he's _what_?"


	9. World Tour

The next four years have a lot of highs and lows.

Umbrella's influence over the United States government turns out to go further than anyone had ever guessed. The President steps down in disgrace, a lot of officials and politicians suddenly retire or disappear or commit questionable suicides, and Umbrella becomes the subject of an international boycott. The interim President issues a suspension of business decree, thousands of lawsuits are filed, and Chris wiles away more than one cheerful evening watching Umbrella executives squirm on basic cable.

In a way, it's like being in California right when the Gold Rush started. Both Umbrella's competitors and the U.S. government are paying well for information that can be used against the corporation in court. There are fugitives to find, labs to find and dismantle like bombs, smuggling rings to bust, and sooner than anyone would've liked, black-market bioweapons dealers to track down. Chris was investigating the company three months before anyone else, and that puts him and Jill ahead of the pack.

The organization Jill puts them in touch with doesn't really have a name. It's a bunch of embittered ex-Umbrella employees funding a number of independent investigation and strike teams, which range in membership from people like them, former soldiers or law enforcement officials who have been genuinely fucked over by Umbrella at some point and are out for revenge, to a rogues' gallery of career mercenaries who're strictly in it for the paycheck. Either way, they're a useful bunch of people to know, and the financial backing is, for a couple of former cops, unbelievably generous.

Chris spends a lot of time on the road and in airports. He's often on a different continent every week, visiting the worst places on Earth. They usually have a small crew with them, which may or may not include Barry or Carlos, but Jill's always with him, everywhere they go.

"It's just common sense," she says at one point. The four of them are on their way out of Cairo at the time, Carlos behind the wheel of a rented jeep, heading to an isolated test area that was secret until very recently. "Everything's FUBAR wall to wall, but when you or I run off on our own, it seems to get a lot worse."

"Minimize the damage to just one place, huh?"

"The last time I left you alone," Jill tells him, "you blew up Antarctica. You're stuck with me now."

* * *

"So you two got a history, huh? You and Jill?"

"Yeah."

Carlos nods and knocks back his shot.

They're in a quiet bar in New Orleans, having a drink before they turn in. Jill and Barry are across town, taking their shift at a warehouse stakeout, and Chris has been dreading this conversation for maybe six weeks.

 _Fuck it._ "Look, man, I'm not trying to screw anything up for you--"

"Nah, it isn't about that," Carlos says. "Relax, Chris. We're cool."

At this point, his accent only comes out on certain words, or when he thinks it'd be funny. Carlos's passport says he's from Kansas City, and it is now marginally believable.

"Seriously?"

"Here's the thing, man. I'm not here with you right now because of Jill. I'm here because Umbrella needs to be taken down, and also I'm pretty sure they want to kill me, so the safest place in the world for me is with one of the two of you." Carlos grins. "Pure survival, you know?"

Chris nods. He's peeling the label off his beer bottle in narrow strips.

"But I can understand why you might not be my biggest fan. I respect history." Carlos drinks some beer.

"I didn't trust you at first because you worked for Umbrella," Chris says. "Your thing with Jill didn't--"

Carlos tilts his head.

"--it wasn't as big of a factor. But Jill trusts you, and I trust her."

"She's a hell of a woman."

"She is."

They clink their beer bottles together and drink.

"She's not that into me, though," Carlos says reflectively.

Chris looks at him.

"I gotta be realistic. This, me and her? This is just the adrenaline wearing off. I respect the hell out of her, but I'm surprised we lasted this long."

"You said this to her yet?"

"Nah, man, I'm selfish like that. Stupid of me." Carlos shrugs.

"Trust me, I know exactly how you feel."

"Figured you would."

They drink the rest of their beers in silence.

* * *

"I'm sorry I can't be there to help you move in," Chris says.

"It's fine. I don't have that much stuff. I'm still not convinced you're going to be able to pay for this," Claire says. "I mean, the textbooks alone..."

"I negotiated it as part of my signing bonus," Chris says. "If you were at Harvard or something, that'd be one thing, but between Mom and Dad's estate and this job, I can handle tuition at a state college."

"If you say so," she says, in a way that suggests she doesn't really believe him.

"I do. Are you still switching majors?"

"Probably. I just need to figure out what." She sighs. "Not biology. I can't open the damn textbook without freaking out."

He almost offers to fly her out to Germany with him, to help with the current operation, but he knows what she'll say. "You'll get there. There's no rush."

"I know, I know." She pauses, and Chris bites back a reflexive groan. "So have you talked to Jill yet?"

"No, Claire, I haven't."

"Let me get this straight," Claire says, and he can hear how much this amuses her in her voice. "Your job right now is to go out and pick fights on purpose with giant monsters that actually do eat people."

"There's more to it than that--"

"So naturally, the only thing you're scared of in the world is telling a woman how you feel about her."

Chris doesn't say anything.

"You're a dope."

"Love you too."

"Love you back. Dope."


	10. Umbrella's End

An informant tips them off in 2003 to the location of the last major Umbrella facility, an isolated lab complex in the Caucasus Mountains. Since the splintering of the Soviet Union, the facility's in a perfect political dead zone, and too far out in the middle of nowhere for anyone to really notice it.

It's a huge lead, so big that they verify the source but don't question it, and Chris and Jill are on the first helicopter out.

An hour after the first boots hit the ground, almost everyone else in the first squads is dead, killed by loose B.O.W.s before they even got inside the building. The second teams touch down shortly thereafter, and they're able to secure the surface level. Once they've got that on lockdown, they start going further in, where they find a long trail of blood, spent shells, and dead bioweapons that stretches all the way into the heart of the facility.

That's where they find Jill and Chris, slumped against a wall and still pointing guns at the corpse of the T-ALOS. They're the sole survivors of the first wave and the only living things left in the building.

* * *

By the time they let him go, Chris feels like a mummy.

He's got some bad burns on his neck, face, and head, souvenirs from all the explosions he barely avoided, and a couple of Hunters got close enough to take a piece off. The prize injury is from the T-ALOS's barrage of missiles, none of which hit either of them, but even a near miss still filled the room with flying clouds of shattered concrete and metal. The effect is a lot like Chris took a couple of barrels of birdshot from medium range. The right half of his body is covered in small, deep puncture wounds, and by the time he got to the medical tent, he'd bled enough into his cold-weather gear that they had to cut him out of it. They send him back out in a pair of scrubs and somebody else's parka.

Their base camp for the mission is right outside an isolated village in North Ossetia that was probably founded centuries ago by reindeer hunters. The locals are old suspicious former Soviets, their children long since gone for someplace warmer with better jobs, but news that the facility is gone got here slightly before Chris did and they're all but dancing in the streets.

The support crew's set up in a couple of heavy-duty tents and a few trailers on the edge of the village. Chris shambles past them, the painkillers and exhaustion both catching up with him, and manages to get most of a bowl of soup down before he nods off at the table in the mess hall. A couple of members of the communications team help him to his feet and get him to a cot inside one of the trailers.

He wakes up twice. The first time is when the trailer's door opens, and he guesses from the silhouette that it's Jill. He immediately goes back to sleep.

The second time, Chris swims up from a confused dream and finds that somebody's undressed him. He's lying on the floor in his shorts, on top of and covered by several army-issue wool blankets, with a small space heater nearby.

There's a warm body on top of him, and he figures out mostly by touch that it's Jill, her hair still wet from a recent shower. She's using him as a pillow, her cheek on his chest and her hair tickling his chin, and Chris puts his arms around her before he falls asleep again.

* * *

By the time he's really awake, the sun's as up as it gets around here. There are enough excited people in the camp that he can hear the constant murmur of conversation through the trailer's walls.

Jill's still asleep, and she's kicked off the blankets in the night. Her T-shirt's riding up, showing off her blue cotton underwear, and one of his hands has migrated to rest protectively on her stomach, just below several layers of support bandages wrapped around her rib cage. He knows from five years ago that getting up before she does is pointless; she'll go limp and try to pin him to the bed, making little nonverbal sounds of protest without actually being awake. Instead, Chris lies there and watches her sleep for what's probably a long time.

When she does wake up, it's all at once. Her eyes snap open, scan the room, and come up to focus on him.

"Hey," Jill says.

"Hey."

"What time is it?"

"Don't know."

"Figure they need us?"

"Doubt it. We're both pretty fucked up."

"Good."

"How're you doing?"

"Sprained wrist," Jill says. "Twisted ankle. Couple of fractured toes, bunch of fractured ribs, a couple of shrapnel hits. This big guy I was with kept throwing himself between me and the explosions."

"You're welcome."

"Didn't ask for your help there, cowboy."

"But you got it anyway."

"You idiot."

"Yeah." Chris clears his throat. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"I wanted to make sure you were okay, but then I didn't really want to leave." She sits up, so their faces are maybe six inches apart. Her hair's dried into something like a rat's nest and there are three stitches in a jagged cut on her forehead, but she's beautiful anyway. "I kinda missed this."

"Yeah. Me too."

She smiles, and leans up to kiss him on the mouth.


	11. Trust

The next day's a long one, and not just because Chris is popping ibuprofen like Pez.

While he and Jill were having their coma, the investigation at the Caucasus Facility has turned up a lot of strange details. Someone fought a small war in parts of the complex that neither Chris or Jill ever saw, no one can figure out how that really convenient yet thorough B.O.W. outbreak got started in the first place, and the day starts off with one of the salvage teams finding the body of an intensely mutated human in an otherwise untouched part of the facility. It's difficult to tell for sure but the dead man appears to be Sergei Vladimir, former Spetsnaz, former head of Umbrella's security, and one of the last Umbrella VIPs still loose in the world. Somebody shot him to death, along with a couple of five-year-old models of Tyrant, and they have no idea who.

The base has been wiped clean. The security footage is gone, the hard drives are empty, and the base's main computer was wiped, all at about the same time Chris and Jill were fighting the T-ALOS. There's still a substantial amount of intel in the base, but it's all hard copies, tissue samples, the corpse of the T-ALOS, and facts they can derive from context. It's a win, but it's not the overwhelming win they came here for.

It doesn't matter, though, because at about the time they're getting ready to break for dinner, somebody uses the satellite internet to check the news.

The information they were here to get has turned up in the last place they expected, dropped right in the laps of the prosecuting attorneys in the U.S. government's case against Umbrella. It's not going to be enough to wreck Umbrella's appeal, but it's going to give the defense team a few sleepless nights.

That kills a lot of their enthusiasm for tearing the facility apart, because that as much as says they've been played. It's par for the course for a lot of these guys, many of whom are mercenaries or ex-military and thus used to the left hand not knowing what the right is doing, but it's nothing they'll ever think of as fun.

"Wesker," Chris says to Jill, and she nods.

* * *

They're back in the trailer and changing each other's bandages, which means they're both half-naked, because some of the shrapnel punctures are in embarrassing places. A week ago, Chris would've hauled himself out of bed to go find a medic rather than let Jill handle this.

"We'll get him," she says. "Eventually. He's not _that_ smart."

"Yeah. You're probably right." He grits his teeth as Jill swabs a hole on his arm with iodine. "Let me ask you something," Chris says.

"Sure."

"What am I to you, Jill?"

"You're my partner," she says.

"Yeah, of course, but--"

"It means more than you know, Chris."

There's something she's not telling him, but he knows better than to push.

"I figured we were done with all this," Chris says. "Was I wrong?"

"No. I decided the whole thing was a mistake after that talk we had in Canberra." Jill picks up the first-aid kit and hands it to him. "You were able to treat me like a teammate before I slept with you. Afterward, you got protective, and started blaming yourself for things you couldn't possibly have predicted. I figured if we were going to keep working together, and there's no one else I'd rather work with, it was better to break it off and go back to how things were."

"What changed your mind?" Chris moves around behind her. There's a long shallow cut across her shoulders, a souvenir from something with claws, and he gets to work with the iodine. She lets out a hissing sound.

"A lot of things, I suppose. Mostly it was..." Jill shakes her head. "Last night was about as close as I think I've come to dying since Raccoon City. I knew it was going to be bad in there, but that was like walking into a war. I honestly don't know how we both survived."

"Well, we're good at this."

"Yeah, we are, but..." She lets it trail off. "I don't know. I could dress it up with a lot of words, but it's like this. You're the only person in the world that I know, _know_ , I can always count on. These last few years, being able to really trust anyone has been so fucking rare..."

"Hey." Chris reaches over her shoulder and puts his hand gently on her head, turning her towards him. "I'm not going anywhere."

She puts her hand over his. "Don't be stupid. We're good, but we're not immortal, and saying I can always count on you is another way of saying I've been taking you for granted. If you'd died--"

"All right," Chris says. "Never mind 'what if,' okay? We're both here."

"I love you," Jill says suddenly.

He stares at the back of her head.

"You're the best man I've ever known and I trust you with my life," she says, "and if that's not love then I don't fucking know what is. We almost died before I'd ever said that and I needed to get it out. Okay?"

"Yeah," Chris says. "I love you too."

He's nearly said that dozens of times in the last four years and never has. Now that it's out there, it took no effort. He almost feels cheated.

She turns and puts her arms around his neck. "I'm glad that's settled, then."

Chris lets his hands rest on her hips. "Yeah."

Jill looks down at their bodies, which are mostly hidden by gauze and bandages, and with a soft chuckle, rests her forehead on Chris's. "And in a perfect world, I would follow that up by banging your ears off."

"You'll get your chance," Chris says. "Just... not right now."

That gets her laughing quietly.


	12. The Verdict

The next day, whole teams of people start arriving in force from all over the world and their base camp turns into the rural Russian version of Mardi Gras. Everyone wants a piece of the Caucasus Facility, empty servers or not, and they've all got a list of good reasons why they should be the first in line. The mess hall turns into the site of a furious argument between small armies of lawyers, cops, scientists, and diplomats, as arbitrated by a few increasingly-frazzled translators. The mercenaries get to stand back and watch it happen, placing bets on which nerd will snap first.

In the middle of all that, somebody takes one look at Chris and says, "Maybe you should go to an actual hospital."

This sounds a lot like common sense. There's nothing left to shoot at the Caucasus, people have arrived who are better at the kind of investigation this has turned into, and Chris's ibuprofen intake is getting to the point they mention on the side of the bottle as what you're not supposed to exceed.

Chris and Jill get a ride into Vladikavkaz, hop a flight from there to Moscow, and from there to Stockholm, where the weather's marginally better and a lot more people speak English. The doctors there get really upset for a while, Chris learns how to say "suicidal idiot" in Swedish, and they schedule both him and Jill for X-rays and minor surgery. He gets cleaned out, stitched up, and packed with gauze; her "twisted" ankle is a genuine fracture and they put her foot in an inflatable walking cast.

By the time Chris is released from the hospital, Jill's been out for a day and every TV they see is broadcasting a bulletin. The Global Pharmeceutical Consortium, which is apparently one of those trade organizations that might as well not exist unless you practice the trade they're in, has opened up their files to the prosecution, in order to avoid even the appearance of being partially to blame for Umbrella's crimes.

The GPC's archives combine with the information from the Caucasus to provide an endless gusher of verifiable atrocities, and what's left of Umbrella's high-priced cadre of lawyers starts to fall apart. After years of being on their back foot, constantly scrambling to prove the unbelievable, the prosecuting attorneys press the attack with a degree of gleeful satisfaction that they don't try to hide.

Chris and Jill check into a hotel in Stockholm for the next two weeks and watch the rest of the trial coverage from a double bed, living off of room service and dopey on Vicodin. They don't bother to get dressed most days, throwing on bathrobes when it's necessary, and spend most of their time curled up together under the sheets.

It's as close as either of them has come to a real vacation in a few years and they mock each other for it. Anyone with any sense would have hopped the next flight to Ibiza, but no, they're watching cable news for eighteen hours a day. It's funny because it's sad.

* * *

"Yeah, I can't pull myself away from the TV either," Claire says. "I've got a term paper I'm blowing off for this."

"Claire..."

"I think I can probably get an extension, Chris. The professor knows I was in Raccoon City, and this doesn't exactly happen every day."

Jill tips the room service guy and wheels his cart into the room. Chris glances at her, she notices where his eyes are pointed, and Jill looks down to see that her robe is hanging open. She's showing a pale span of skin from collarbone to navel, maybe an inch either way from being indecent, which explains a lot about how the room service guy was acting. She makes a muted "eep" sound and tightens the bathrobe's belt, and Chris breaks into laughter.

"What's so funny?"

"Oh. Jill did something--"

Jill grabs his cell away from him. "Claire? Chris is an idiot. How are you?"

He reaches out for the phone, but she's already halfway across the room.

"What'd he tell you? Really." Jill mock glares at him. "No, we're both fine. He's got about three hundred stitches in him, though--no, of course he wouldn't."

Chris leans back against the headboard and rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

"We could probably tell each other stories all day. What else did he say?" Jill listens for a minute. "Okay. I suppose I should let you know. We're..." She covers the mouthpiece with her hand. "Dating? Together? I don't even know how to phrase this."

"Partners."

Jill looks at him for a long moment, her face softening. Finally, she uncovers the mouthpiece. "I'm in love with your brother."

A second passes. She pulls the handset away from her face and stares at it blankly, then hands it back to Chris.

"What'd you say to her?" Chris asks.

"I said 'no shit,'" Claire says. "Anyway, about the trial..."

* * *

The final verdict comes in two days later.

Most people watching the hearings, Chris included, are expecting some kind of eleventh-hour revelation that'll let Umbrella skate on at least some of the charges. He's been having nightmares about a T-Virus outbreak in the courtroom, the kind of dream that draws a lot of its power from a sick waking conviction that it's actually going to happen, and the closer they come to the verdict the more anxious he is about it.

Nothing of the sort happens. Umbrella's appeals are denied and the company is now officially closed. Wherever Ozwell Spencer is right now, he's suddenly number one on every most wanted list in the world, and every mercenary they know just heard a sound like a cash register opening.

He and Jill stare at the TV for a while, neither quite able to believe what they're seeing, before both their cell phones light up. They spend the next couple of hours with the TV muted, fielding are-you-watching-this calls from everyone they've ever known: Barry, Carlos, Claire, Leon Kennedy, Jill's old Army buddies, Chris's friends on the Air Force, and dozens of the men and women they've been working with for the last four years. On TV, the prosecutors are on every channel doing the legal equivalent of an end-zone strut.

The calls from friends eventually taper off and are replaced by reporters, asking for statements or interviews concerning the Caucasus Facility. At that point, Chris turns off his phone, and a second later, so does Jill.

By then, the exit interviews are over and the TV is showing a shot of the crowd around the courthouse. Hundreds of them are holding poster-sized photographs, showing relatives and friends who died in Raccoon City, either in the outbreak or who disappeared there at some point in the last forty years. There are a couple of faces in the photos that he recognizes: a waitress at Emmy's Diner, a guy he used to see at the bar. One is held at a bad angle to the camera, but he's pretty sure it's of Forest Speyer, held by an old woman with tears running down her cheeks.

He reaches out and puts an arm around Jill's shoulders, and she settles back against him.

"It's not really over," he says.

"I know," Jill says, "but it is for tonight."

Chris turns off the TV.


	13. Original Eleven

Three weeks later, they're in London. Chris is wearing the first suit he's owned since he was a teenager, which he had tailored to him in a shop a few streets over. It's surprisingly comfortable, but he still thinks someone's going to ask him to validate their parking.

Jill, in a blue jacket and knee-length skirt, looks elegant and has no such concerns.

"The general idea," Clive O'Brian says, "is to create an independent advisory board to handle 'bioterrorism.'" Despite the name, he's an American, with an impressive list of credentials in international law enforcement. They're in a small office in what'll eventually be a much larger building, and the sounds of renovation are coming through the walls. "The funding's coming from the GPC, but that's it. They don't have any oversight as to how it's spent. A check is simply deposited."

"If I'm reading the charter right," Jill says, "we wouldn't have any law enforcement powers to speak of."

"No. We're consultants, not police or military." O'Brian folds his hands and rests them on his desk blotter. "The political will exists for an international advisory organization, but it doesn't go much further than that. You'd answer to me as commissioner and have the authority to draw arms, but officially, you're discouraged from using them."

"This is starting to sound like bullshit," Chris says. It comes out angrier than he intended and Jill gives him a sidelong look.

O'Brian nods. "Oh, it is. It'll be an enormous pain in the ass. Then something bad will happen, we'll prove we're necessary, and we'll gradually expand into what we actually need to be."

"Chris," Jill says, and Chris takes a deep breath.

"So this won't be worth much until somebody dies," Chris says.

"Just about," O'Brian says. "This is the world."

* * *

"What do you think?" Jill asks.

"I think that I just got offered a job in a country where they don't know how to make pizza," Chris says, and tosses the rest of the slice into the closest trash bin.

"That's fair," she says, "but not quite what I meant."

"You don't think it seems like a step down?"

She stops to look through a store window at an expensive white dress. "I wouldn't mind belonging to something again."

He opens his mouth to speak.

"Besides you, you smooth-talking devil."

Chris closes his mouth.

"One of the things I liked about the Army, and then the STARS," Jill says, mostly to her reflection, "was that sense of being part of something bigger than myself."

"You had a place."

"Yeah, and it was a place I'd earned, doing something I'm good at." She turns to him. "What do you think?"

"I don't like the idea of sitting around and waiting for the next disaster," Chris says, "but I go where you go."

"You don't have to."

"Well, if I don't do this, I'll probably go blow up Antarctica."

Jill keeps a straight face. "Right. I should have taken that into consideration."

"Probably."

"All right," she says, "let's go tell O'Brian we're in."

Chris walks in that direction, and Jill waits until he's about half a step past her and grabs him by the tie. He goes along with it and she yanks him in her direction for a quick kiss on the lips.

"You really do look good in that suit, you know," she says with her mouth against his.

"Thanks."

* * *

One of the things that Chris will never be quite used to is that he is, in certain circles, famous.

He and Jill have a reputation as the team that took down Umbrella. They try to downplay it as much as they can, since a lot of people died that night, but the story gets bigger every time someone tells it. The most common version makes it sound like he and Jill stormed the Caucasus by themselves and mowed down everything inside it in slow-motion with a discordantly beautiful soundtrack and doves flying around.

As such, it becomes a big deal that they're involved with the newly-minted Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, or BSAA. Their presence is indicative that the organization is both legitimate and serious, and as O'Brian saw coming, it also defuses many of the United States's initial concerns. A lot of people in North America get predictably upset about the idea of yet another United Nations supervisory organization, but when it's being run and co-founded by Americans, that takes some of the sting out.

Chris spends most of a day being interviewed and answering the same questions repeatedly. His picture appears in a few newspapers worldwide, nowhere near the front page, and he looks startled or brainless in every single one of them. Jill tries to tell him otherwise--she looks like an actress at a film premiere in all of hers and the media reaction to her is making Chris angry in a very caveman sort of way--but she's outvoted by pretty much everyone else Chris knows.

They get back to their hotel room late that night and discover someone's dropped off an expensive bouquet of orchids for them both. The card is unsigned and reads CONGRATULATIONS ON THE NEW JOB in neat handwritten block capitals.

They both recognize Wesker's handwriting from back in the STARS office and end up calling the bomb squad, but it really is just a bouquet, paid for with a credit card that belongs to a man who doesn't exist.

"I really hate that guy," Chris says.

Jill nods.


	14. Downtime

"You've moved in already?" Jill asks.

"Yeah."

"You aren't in the process of moving. This is it. You're done."

"...yeah."

She gives him a funny look.

They're in Chris's new apartment, a ten-minute ride by subway from the BSAA offices. The rent is ridiculous, but he can afford it, and the building is only a few years old. His living room, which is open onto a kitchenette, contains a black couch, a glass-top coffee table, and a black cabinet that holds a small stereo and a TV set. The rest is empty space, bare off-white walls, and a dark hardwood floor.

"Your house in Raccoon looked like a thrift store," Jill says. "After an earthquake."

"Yeah, I went a little overboard back then. It was my first civilian apartment. Cut me some slack." Chris sits down on the couch. "I figured as long as we're starting from scratch, I'd try something different."

Jill wanders around the room. She's got a thoughtful look on her face.

"So, out of curiosity," Chris says, "why're we keeping secrets from O'Brian?"

"Huh?"

"You go into professional mode the moment we're in the office and you don't stop until we leave. I've been assuming it was because you didn't want him, or any of the rest of these guys, to know we're together."

"I didn't even realize I was doing it." Jill walks over and sits down next to him, curling her legs up underneath herself. "But no, I don't think I do."

"Why's that?"

"It's not because I'm ashamed of you, Chris."

"I didn't--"

"You were either thinking it or you would've gotten around to thinking it eventually."

She's right, so he holds up both hands in mock surrender.

Jill leans one elbow on the couch's armrest and stares into space. They're both prone to making decisions on the spur of the moment, then having to go back afterward and figure out why they did what they did. It's a habit they share with a lot of cops and soldiers he's known. Chris can tell that's what she's doing, so he gets up, grabs a couple of beers from his fridge, and sits back down.

"It's not that I don't trust O'Brian," Jill says, and takes a beer from him.

"No, he seems all right." The subtext there is that they've both known a lot of people who've seemed all right.

"It's..." She's looking for the right turn of phrase. "I've always been careful to keep my professional and private lives separate. I have to have some amount of detachment between them, or I couldn't keep doing what I do."

He nods.

"That means that when we're working, you're my partner and that's it. I love you, never question that, but if I let myself react to you like that when we're in the field, I'll start second-guessing myself. I can't afford to do that. If I'm not calm, I'm dead." Jill uses the hem of her skirt to twist the cap off her beer.

"You can do that? Just turn it off?"

"I can if it's important."

"I can't."

"I know, and obviously, it doesn't slow you down any. I'm asking you to respect what I do, not change what you do."

Chris opens his beer and takes a drink. "You know I already respect you."

"Yeah."

"I'll do my best, Jill, but I'm going to screw this up the first chance I get. They'll figure it out eventually."

"I think you'll be surprised." She drinks some beer. "Changing the subject..."

"Yeah?"

"I had a doctor's appointment earlier today. The X-rays came back and all my fractures healed clean. My ribs are as good as new."

"Good to hear it."

"How're you doing?"

Chris doesn't think anything of the question. "I'm all right. I'll have a couple of scars, but that's about it."

Jill nods. "Good. That's why I stopped by."

She stands up, puts her beer on the coffee table, slips out of her sandals, and unzips her skirt. Jill lets it drop down her legs, steps out of it, and folds it over the arm of Chris's couch. She proceeds to unbutton her blouse, shrug it off, and put it on top of the skirt. She isn't wearing anything underneath.

Chris is frozen in place, his beer bottle halfway to his mouth.

"I haven't been able to do everything I've wanted to because of the fractured ribs," Jill says casually, and puts one hand on her hip. "Now that they're better, I'd like to start making up for lost time."

"Hold on a second. I'm staring."

"Go ahead."

Chris puts the beer down and stands up. "All right, I'm done."

"Good. You've got a new bed." Jill puts her arms around his neck. "Let's go break it in."

* * *

The world is blowing up, but they can't do much about it.

The United States is in the process of consolidating a half-dozen task forces and special units into what becomes the Federal Bioterror Commission. The FBC gets watered down in the planning stages and ends up as a paper tiger, but in the meantime, President Graham takes up the slack. He has squads operating all over North and South America under his direct authority, and Graham comes off like the existence of bioweapons offends him on a personal level. The agents under his command are tasked not with containment or intelligence but outright extermination, and for a few months, Chris can't so much as turn over a rock without finding one of Graham's people underneath it.

China has an anti-bioterror organization of its own, operating under the aegis of the Ministry of State Security, and the Morpheus Duvall incident in late 2002 puts it on the world stage. Bioweaponry researchers and former Umbrella holdings in Asia develop a habit of quietly disappearing, and it's become somewhat common knowledge that China has several satellite-mounted particle cannons in orbit, which they are not supposed to have and not afraid to use. When Chris deals with them, they are polite, thorough, respectful of his experience, and utterly terrifying.

Ozwell Spencer is still at large, which irritates the hell out of every law enforcement agent in the first world. His paper trail has been deliberately sanitized and most of his known associates are dead, preemptively assassinated years ago. Even a slight clue to his whereabouts is ultimately useless, as it's soon buried underneath a horde of mercenaries, bounty hunters, and people with revenge high on their minds.

Many of Umbrella's former employees, both mercenaries and researchers, get flushed out by either the Americans or by the teams pursuing Spencer. Many of them don't allow themselves to be taken alive, and the ones that get away immediately drop underground. That includes Wesker, who's gone uncharacteristically quiet.

There's a lot going on, but they're in no position to contribute. The Americans don't want their help, the Chinese are only interested in exchanging information, and Europe has yet to have a serious bioterrorist event. For the first six months, the BSAA is seen as an expensive indulgence, and most of O'Brian's job is justifying its existence.

That puts Chris and Jill in a strange position. They've fought for the last five years, and now they have what amounts to regular office jobs. It's relaxing for a while, then it starts feeling ominous, like they're living on top of an unexploded bomb. Chris puts in a lot of time in the gym and on the shooting range, burning off nervous energy, and all he can do is wait for O'Brian's disaster.

* * *

Jill turns out to be right, which surprises him.

No one at the BSAA seems to think that he and Jill are anything other than partners, understandably close but entirely platonic. For most of their new co-workers, it's because they don't care. They're data analysts and biologists, focused on their jobs and oblivious to everything else.

Some of the rest don't figure it out because they've got other motives, and he brings that up to Jill after work one night, as they're walking to dinner.

"Would it be a problem if I told people you were a lesbian?" he asks.

It's meant to be a joke, but doesn't come out quite right.

"It's not true," Jill says slowly, "so yeah, I would have an issue with that. Why do you ask?"

"A lot of the guys at the office want to ask you out, so naturally, they come to me looking for details. What food you like, your hobbies, that kind of thing. It's annoying me."

"Mm." Jill puts her arm through his. "Tell you what. You can go ahead and do that if I can tell all those ladies who're flirting with you that you're gay."

"What? What ladies?"

She laughs.

"Somebody's been flirting with me?"

"You're clueless," Jill says, "and God help me, that's adorable. Half the secretarial pool has been making a play for you for weeks."

It takes Chris a while to process that, which lasts until they're seated at their table.

"You're serious with this," he says finally.

Jill tosses her hair back, toys idly with a straw, and puts on a wide, coy smile. " _Hiiii_ , Chris," she says with a giggle, her voice pitched a couple of octaves higher than normal. It's an uncanny impersonation of Clive O'Brian's secretary.

"She's just being friendly--"

"Oh, be real," Jill says in her normal voice. "She can't be any more obvious than that without reaching down the front of your pants." She picks up the menu and flips it open.

Chris shakes his head. "I'm surprised you haven't said anything before this."

"Why would I? You didn't notice."


	15. Arclight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Los Angeles and Fuzhou are my ballpark guesses for two of the bioterrorism incident sites labeled on the world map at the start of _Resident Evil: Degeneration_.
> 
> Also, we're starting to get into big spoilers for _Revelations_ (and there's a big one for _Degeneration_ if you haven't seen that yet), so you might want to go play that if you haven't already.

The T-Virus has been available on the black market in small amounts for decades, ever since it became the wonder glue that held Umbrella's bioweapons research together, but it was always prohibitively expensive for anyone without an oil fortune or a major corporate sponsor. If someone simply wanted to kill a large number of people, there were many easier and more reliable ways to do it. The only real reason to buy it was for research purposes.

The theory at the BSAA is that early in 2004, the handful of Umbrella's researchers that haven't been arrested, killed, scooped up by Umbrella's former competitors, or put to work in some nation's black-bag weapons program (nobody can prove that last has happened, but everyone assumes it must have) make a break for it. New identities and no-questions-asked flights to South America both require money. The result is that the black market gets flooded with Umbrella-era bioweapons, the price of which drops to the point where they're competitive with conventional ballistics.

This theory is wrong, and most of the outbreaks in 2004 and early 2005 can be traced directly back to Frederic Downing, who's ensuring there will be a market for the T-Virus vaccine he's about to invent and then steal. Nobody knows that until Leon Kennedy arrests him, and as far as Chris is concerned, it doesn't matter. Suddenly, everyone with a grudge has access to BOWs or the raw T-Virus, which leads to a huge spike in bioterrorism early in 2004, and many of the nations that dismissed or ignored the BSAA are suddenly looking for its help.

* * *

"I know how you're trained," Chris says. "You've had it drilled into your heads to always go for the center of mass. It's smart thinking, but it's not the best play here."

He half-turns. Quint Cetcham's on the projector, and he puts up an image of a zombie. Thankfully, it's one of their file pictures of a T-Virus infectee, and not one of the film stills that Quint is prone to use.

"A person who has fully succumbed to the T-Virus looks like this," Chris says. He's grimacing and he can't help it. Seeing even a picture of a carrier is always going to come with a full dose of sense memory, complete with some mild nausea. "Go ahead and call it a 'zombie' if you want. I do."

A couple of the cops laugh awkwardly, but not like it's actually funny.

Maybe a hundred SWAT and patrol officers from all across New York are here, and most of them are giving him what Chris has come to recognize as a uniquely New York are-you-shitting-me stare. Over the last week, he's briefed what might be every cop in the city, one room like this at a time.

"If they die from the virus, or succumb to injuries with the virus in their system, they reanimate. At this point, you're looking at a dead man. Whoever they were, they are dead and they are not coming back." Chris puts firm emphasis on the last few words out of a sense of obligation, but he's been on the road giving this speech for about four months now. Most of these guys either don't believe him or won't until after they see their first zombie. This speech will only save the smart and the quick, which doesn't cover as many people as he'd prefer. "Their hearts stop, their body begins to rot, and they get back up, looking to attack and eat anything living that they can find. They aren't smart or fast, but they don't get tired and they don't stop unless you make them."

Quint changes over to a different picture. It's a picture of a zombie they fought a couple of months ago in Fuzhou, the corpse of a middle-aged Chinese man who'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, with a bullet hole high in his forehead. Chris knows what it'll be and doesn't look, although it sends an uneasy whisper through the room.

"Shoot them in the head," Chris says. "If you aim anywhere else, they may drop eventually, but it takes time and ammunition you probably won't have. Sever the brain stem or destroy the brain and the zombie dies permanently.

"That's it. Any questions?"

A lot of hands go up.

* * *

"The problem is that there are a lot of rumors about the T-Virus," Quint says, "and most of 'em make a lot more sense than the actual T-Virus does."

Chris nods.

"I mean, really, I want to know how the hell it violates the square-cube law, and where it gets the energy to fuel the mutations--"

"I know, Quint."

"Sorry."

One of the first things Clive O'Brian did was split Chris up from Jill and assign them both a rotating cast of new partners. O'Brian's reasoning was that, as two of the most highly experienced counter-bioterror operatives in the world, it wasn't efficient to have both Chris and Jill in the same place at the same time. Chris is pretty sure he was right, but that doesn't change the fact that he hasn't seen Jill in three months.

Quint Cetcham's a talker, and has about sixty different ways to burn off nervous energy that are all equally obnoxious. On the plus side, he's smart, he's surprisingly brave, and he's amazing with computers, which is becoming more and more of a necessity.

"I think that last one was a keeper," Quint says. A camcorder is linked to his laptop with a thin black cable, and whatever he's doing is making the laptop's hard drive whine like a power drill. "I'm uploading it to our home server for editing, and once O'Brian gives us the go-ahead, I think we can make that one more widely available. You did good."

"Doesn't feel like it."

"Ah, screw 'em, right? You're doing the best you can. The last few you did weren't you, it was the audience."

Something plays a five-second clip of obnoxious Japanese pop music, and Quint pats himself down. Chris rolls his eyes and puts one hand on his temple, massaging it with his first two fingers. Quint eventually finds his cell phone inside a pocket in his cargo pants, but instead of answering it, he looks confused.

"Does the word 'arclight' mean anything to you?"

Chris looks up. "Yeah. Why?"

"Keith just sent it to me as a text message. Nothing else."

"Where is he?"

"He and Jill are in Los Angeles--"

Chris stands up. "Send him a message back. Just say 'received.' I'm calling O'Brian and then I'm going to L.A."

"Hang on. What's arclight?"

"It was an aerial operation during Vietnam," Chris says. He's already throwing his things into his suitcase. "It means Jill's in trouble and she needs--" The situation has degenerated beyond saving and she needs him to come in and leave the entire area a smoking, lifeless crater. It's a term from the old days. "--extraction."

"You guys have code words? Like Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin? That's _so cool_ \--"

"Quint."

"Right. Old partner in trouble. Got it." Quint unplugs the camcorder from the notebook. "I can have us out there in five hours if I get us on an Air Force jet."

"Do it."


	16. Panic

"By the time we received the call," Jill says, "the local police were spooked. I was unable to get any volunteers to head into the quarantine zone, so Keith and I went in on our own."

"Which you aren't legally allowed to do," Clive O'Brian says. He's not angry, exactly, but he's spent the last few hours dealing with the mayor of Los Angeles, who's furious. Shit is threatening to roll downhill.

"Boss, the people we went after had kids with them," Keith Lumley says. Jill is as calm as usual, but he's twitchy, sure he'll get fired but that it was for a righteous cause. "They'd locked themselves up in a basement apartment before the quarantine went down. We couldn't just leave 'em to die."

"The situation degenerated." Jill leans back in her chair and leans her head on her hand. "We'd thought the infection was recent, spread by a white supremacist group that took responsibility for the attack. After we tracked them down, it turned out they were leaping on the opportunity and had no connection to it, or to the bioweapons trade. As far as we can tell, it may have been a completely accidental leak, and it had been going on for a while."

"I'm sure it's all well-documented in your report," O'Brian says, "which I will read in time. Please get to the reason why--"

"We fought something a lot like it back in the Spencer mansion," Chris says. He hates referring to the mansion incident, like he's one of those old bastards who can relate everything in his life back to a single past event. The problem is that such is actually the case. "The T-Virus contamination had gotten into a hydroponic garden in one of the buildings' basement. There's no way of knowing what the plants were to start with--"

"Weed," Quint says, and everyone in the room glares at him. Quint shuts up.

"--but they'd infiltrated most of the nearby buildings. It had to be burned out."

"You ducked out on a week of briefing the NYPD on T-Virus carriers, Chris. It's not your job to drop everything and burn down multiple city blocks when--"

"My job is to fight bioterrorism, isn't it? That sure as hell qualified--"

Jill kicks the front of O'Brian's desk, which makes a hollow sound like a bass drum. They both look at her.

"I needed someone outside the incident zone to come in with specialized equipment," Jill says, "and Chris did that when the locals wouldn't. If he hadn't, Keith and I might not be dead, but the civilians probably would be. As it was, it was close."

O'Brian looks back and forth from her to Chris, and it's hard to tell what he's thinking.

Finally, he throws both hands in the air. "Fine. I'll read the report and release an edited version to the press. In the future, however, any plans that involve detonating apartment buildings--"

"I don't do that _all_ the time," Chris says with a look at Jill.

She doesn't respond, and that's when he knows she's worse off than she looks.

"Does this mean we're not fired?" Keith asks.

"Get out of my office."

Keith stands up. He's trying to act casual, but he's doing it at about twice the speed he should be. "Cool. Later."

Chris decides he's got the right idea, and with another glance at Jill, he follows Keith out.

* * *

It's been about four months since anyone's been in Jill's apartment. All the windows are open, but it's a warm and windless summer evening, so there's almost no ventilation.

Her apartment is somewhere between cluttered and cozy. It's a little smaller than Chris's and she's filled what looks like every square inch of it with overstuffed furniture and throw rugs. Half-finished books are scattered everywhere, their pages marked with playing cards, and there's a scented-candle hint to the air that nothing can quite overcome. Her TV is on, tuned to a news channel with the volume down.

"I never talked to you about the first couple of days in the Raccoon City outbreak," Jill says suddenly.

Chris nods. He's been waiting for her to get around to this.

"It's not something I like to bring up, because I'll dwell on it. I know I did everything I could, but in the end, I couldn't save anyone. Nowhere was safe and nobody was really in charge. It was a nightmare, even before the Nemesis showed up." Jill finishes her vodka and tonic and gets up to make another one. "Being back in the United States, with civilian infected, brought that back for me in a big way."

"You saved somebody this time," Chris says. "A lot of people, in fact."

"There are times I think I could save people every day for the rest of my life and it wouldn't be enough." Jill comes back into her living room with the bottle of vodka in her hand and sets it down on the coffee table. She pours it straight and takes a sip. "A lot of the cops in LA were looking to me for marching orders at the start of the whole mess, since I was the big important expert, and I thought, what would they do if I just started screaming?"

"You held it together, though."

"Barely."

"Still counts."

She looks at him with an empty expression on her face.

"C'mon," Chris says. He puts down his glass and switches from her armchair to her sofa, next to her, and gathers her up with one arm. "Blaming yourself for what you can't change is my thing, not yours. You did the best you could back then, and you did it now."

Jill leans in against him. "I know. I just... I nearly lost it."

"But you didn't."

"Yeah."

"You're allowed to be human, Jill. Nobody knows about it except me."

She makes a murmured sound of acknowledgement and drinks some more vodka, so Chris takes the glass away from her and puts it on the table. When Jill looks up to glare at him for it, he kisses her on the forehead.

It's an impulse decision that he didn't actually intend to use as a way to change the subject, but that's how Jill interprets it anyway. She kisses him back, the situation rapidly evolves, and soon she's on top of him with her tongue in his mouth and their clothes are in disarray. She tastes like the vodka she's been drinking and there's a steadily building urgency in her movements that Chris remembers from six years ago.

They haven't been alone together for three months. This was going to happen. It was just a question of when.

* * *

"Yeah, always. The moment I know I'm safe at home. Don't you?"

"Nah, I just get hungry." It takes Chris a couple of tries to get up from the couch. It's big and fluffy and comfortable and in no way meant for what they've been doing all night, so now it's like the couch is trying to eat him. "I did wonder, though."

"What's that?"

"What'd you do back in Raccoon City? We got into some trouble in the STARS unit."

Jill presses her face against the couch cushions and laughs. Their clothes gradually came off over the course of the last few hours and are now strewn across her living room, kicked off and forgotten. "I had some very satisfied girlfriends back then."

"Ah. That explains it."

There's something else he's always wanted to ask about, but it's undeniably a turn-on and right now, he's wiped out. She's always enthusiastic, but the fight in Los Angeles is as close to the old days as they've been in years.

Chris keeps his mouth shut and goes into the kitchen to call for takeout. When he comes back into the living room, she's taken the TV off of mute and is sitting up.

Onscreen, a crooked camera feed is displaying a crowded city street, and as they watch, something that is unmistakably a Hunter--a later production model, a little bigger than what they know but still very much a Hunter--jumps onto the hood of a car and roars to the sky. The picture is hazy and it looks like the lens might be cracked, but there are people lying in the street nearby who are probably dead.

The TV cuts back to a shaken-looking anchorwoman. "That footage has been released online and purports to have been recently shot on the streets of Terragrigia, the recently-opened aquapolis in the Mediterranean Sea. We are currently receiving confirming reports that Terragrigia has been openly attacked with biological weapons."

"I think we better go to the office," Jill says.

"Yeah."


	17. Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically nothing _but_ huge spoilers for _Resident Evil: Revelations_.
> 
> If that's a problem, stop reading now.
> 
> Seriously. I mean it.

A little over a year later, they're in what used to be the dining hall of the Queen Dido, and what used to be Jack Norman bleeds out on the floor.

Chris wants to put a couple of dozen rounds into the back of the fucker's head just to make sure they've finished the job, but first, they've got maybe six bullets between them after that fight, and second, he almost feels sorry for him. Norman was unquestionably complicit in one of the most destructive terrorist attacks in human history, but the man they saw, fought, and have now killed was a broken lunatic. Norman's spent the last year down here, insane and ranting, surrounded by the dead. What's left of the Dido looks like a sneak preview of hell.

After beaming the first video on Norman's PDA back to BSAA headquarters, they unhook it from Norman's broadcast rig, then put their scuba gear back on and exfiltrate from the Queen Dido. By the time Kirk sees their signal flare and picks them back up, the BSAA's radio band is full of excited chatter and Morgan Lansdale's been arrested.

Jill conks out on Chris's shoulder the second they sit down. Kirk drops them at the Italian branch office, which is a closet with pretensions, and they're immediately bundled aboard a flight back to London for debriefing. Jill has already let it be known that she injected a vial of the T-Abyss vaccine while she was below decks on the Zenobia and she's been waltzing with Oozes all night, so she gets swept away to the medical lab by overeager biologists the moment the plane lands.

Chris, by comparison, gets a five-minute checkup, fresh bandages and a blood test. It's almost insulting.

He's freshly showered, wearing street clothes and reading a newspaper in the lounge outside the BSAA's medical wing when Clive O'Brian finds him. O'Brian's in rough shape, but neither of them are anywhere near a hundred percent, and on the best day of his life O'Brian looks like he got rained on about an hour ago.

"I'm sorry," O'Brian says. "I figured it was about time I said it."

"I didn't see it coming from you," Chris says. It's times like this he wishes he still smoked. He wants something to keep his hands busy. "Everyone in this business seems to have their own agenda, but you're the last guy I would've expected it from."

"That's part of why I did it." O'Brian's got his hands in his pockets and he sounds tired, rather than ashamed or defensive. They might as well be talking about a movie that he doesn't like. "I knew someone was dirty, but not who. Better to play the part of the slightly incompetent career bureaucrat for a while, and if that meant lying to all of you, then that's what I had to do."

Chris nods. "What's the plan about Jessica?"

"I've had her access pulled and put in a report to Interpol, but there've been no sightings. We'll get her." O'Brian laughs and rubs a hand through his hair. "Or you will, anyway."

Chris looks at him.

"I'm stepping down, Chris. That was the price I had to pay to get Lansdale off the board."

"You sure about this?"

"Yeah. This is a dirty job, and it's only going to get dirtier. You need someone in charge who you can trust, and that's not me anymore."

Chris nods. O'Brian holds out his hand, and Chris shakes it.

That's when Jill comes through the door, pulling on a light jacket. She opens her mouth, notices O'Brian's there, and stops short.

"One of you two might consider stepping up to take my place," O'Brian says.

"You're leaving?" Jill asks.

"I'm sure I'll be around in some capacity," O'Brian says, "but this won't be the same BSAA in a week. This house will need someone military to keep it in line."

Chris and Jill share a look.

"I'm not really a command type," Jill says.

"Wesker's still out there," Chris says simultaneously.

O'Brian gets a tired grin. "Well. We'll see what ends up happening."

"Yeah," Jill says. "It's been a long couple of days. If you'll excuse us?" She takes Chris by the shoulder and half-drags him down the hall. Chris offers O'Brian an apologetic shrug and lets her do it, putting up just enough resistance to make it a visual joke, and O'Brian raises an eyebrow.

* * *

"It's tough to get old," Chris says, and comes into his bedroom with a TV tray in both hands.

Jill gives him a dirty look and sits up in his bed, the sheets falling to her waist. Both her hands go to her hair, which has dried into something that looks like a haystack. "Did I actually fall asleep in the _shower_?"

"Afraid so," Chris says, and sets down the tray. It's got sliced bagels, a tub of cream cheese, a pot of coffee, two mugs, two highball glasses, a knife, and a carton of orange juice on it, thus representing the full spectrum of his breakfast-making abilities, and Jill manages to wait until he's out of the way before she digs in.

She doesn't seem to notice that she's naked. Chris has known a few women who cover up reflexively, always grabbing for the sheets or a robe the moment they're done with sex or out of the shower. Jill has never had that problem. It's one of his favorite things about her.

"Don't think I don't appreciate this," Jill says with her mouth full, "but you don't have to wait on me. I'm fine."

"Do you have any idea how much of a jackass I felt like," Chris says, "when I found out I was on the wrong ship? I could've strangled Quint right then."

"Oh, okay, that's what this is about," Jill says. She spreads cream cheese on half of her second bagel. "I had to back myself up, so you think you need to apologize."

Chris sits at the foot of the bed and carefully pours himself a cup of coffee. "More or less."

"You know that's stupid."

"Yeah."

"Just so we're clear," she says, and drinks some orange juice. "I'll think of some way you can make it up to me, at some point."

"I figured."

She looks quietly amused for a minute, but then a shadow passes across her face. Jill looks down at the half-eaten bagel in her hand like she's forgotten what it's for, then puts it down and picks up her coffee cup. "We should do something for Parker," she says, finally. "What do we know about his family?"

"I'll check his file the next time we're at the office. I'm sure they've already handled it, but yeah." Chris pours the last of the orange juice into his glass, then sets the empty tray on the floor next to the bed. "A college fund or something."

"You'd have gotten a kick out of him. He liked to complain about _everything_ , but he did it while he pulled his weight. He'd have been pretty good."

"Yeah. I think I'd have liked him if I'd known him better."

That kills the conversation, and eventually, Chris decides to get up and take care of the breakfast dishes. Jill pulls on one of his T-shirts and follows him into the kitchenette a couple of minutes later.

"So you didn't want to be in charge either, huh?" Jill asks. She leans against the doorjamb and folds her arms under her breasts.

"It's not something I think I'd be good at. I'd be one of those COs who's always in the field, screwing up everyone else's objectives because I need to be where the action is." He rinses the plates and stacks them up in the tiny dishwasher. "Besides, Wesker and Spencer are still out there. I'm not going to go drive a desk until they're off the board."

Jill's quiet. Chris glances at her and she's looking introspective, so he keeps cleaning the kitchen.

"What happens after we catch them?" she says, finally.

"Well, there's the trial. We'd probably have to track down and clean out a few bunkers and labs, and you know he'd have some kind of contingency plan--"

"No, that's not what I mean." Jill shakes her head. "Play along with me. Wesker and Spencer are both in prison. They're never getting out. Wesker probably calls me over to his cell every couple of months to ask me about the lambs. What do we do then?"

Chris hesitates before answering. "I guess I assumed we'd keep doing what we do."

"We can't, though, not forever. We're not getting any younger, and it's not like the old days where we figured the job wouldn't get done without us. We can take a step back, make the BSAA the way it should've been in the first place, hire some good people..."

"Are you saying you _want_ one of us to take O'Brian's job?"

"Not yet, at least. You're right. Wesker needs to be taken out and I want to be there when it happens."

He nods.

"But after that..." Jill trails off. "Do you ever think about starting a family?"

The question takes him off-guard, but then he gets it. "Hang on. So you want us to step up to the command level because you want to have a kid?"

"Maybe someday, yeah. I mean, I'm already thirty."

 _Also, I nearly died the day before yesterday. Repeatedly._ She doesn't have to say that part. They're both thinking it.

"A kid... with me," Chris says slowly.

She gives him a funny look. "Yes, with you."

"Wouldn't you want to get married first?"

"Are you proposing?"

"Do you... want me to propose?"

She laughs, like it's the funniest thing in the world.

"Seriously, I need a hint here."

Jill shakes her head. "Whatever we do, you're right. It should probably wait until after we take care of Wesker and Spencer. After that, though... I guess I wanted to see if you were thinking about the future."

"So I shouldn't have seen this coming?"

"No, I'm as bad as you are when it comes to the job. I've been just as focused on it. You're off the hook."

Chris looks relieved, and she comes over to give him a hug.

"Just try to keep it in mind, okay?" she asks. "There is life after this."


	18. After the Fall

Chris didn't appreciate how many people knew Jill until her funeral.

Most of the BSAA's there, of course: Clive O'Brian, Quint, Keith, the not-as-dead-as-he-seemed Parker Luciani, most of the bureau chiefs, a lot of agents, and dozens of rookies. There are a lot of young women among the newer recruits, relatively speaking, and they all seem to have a story about Jill, some quiet conversation or word of advice that kept them going.

Barry turns up with his wife and daughters in tow; Moira and Polly are fifteen and thirteen now, both bigger than most girls their age, and Barry spends a lot of his time trying to convince them not to become cops. Leon Kennedy's there, the first time Chris has met him face to face, and Chris finally gets the chance to thank him in person for passing on Claire's message from Rockfort Island. Carlos stumbles in a little drunk, which irritates a lot of people but Chris knows exactly how he feels, and by the time he leaves Chris has talked him into applying to the BSAA's South American branch. Kevin Ryman arrives late, which is a big surprise because Chris was pretty sure he was dead, and spends a lot of the funeral having a muttered argument with a blonde reporter named Ashcroft. One of the wreaths came with a card hand-signed by Rebecca Chambers, with no return address.

There are quite a few people at the funeral who no one seems to know, standing evocatively by trees on the edges of the cemetery. Most turn out to be fast-talking journalists or biographers and reveal themselves by trying for exit interviews or statements from Chris or O'Brian or a half-dozen other BSAA VIPs. This is almost always a poor life choice.

One of the mystery mourners looks familiar. She's Asian, in a conservative black dress and matching sun hat, and when she realizes Chris is coming her way she pulls a nearly perfect fade. A few mourners walk between them and block his line of sight for a few seconds, and when they're gone, so is she.

Everyone's expecting Chris to speak at the funeral. He doesn't.

* * *

The wake's predictably destructive. A lot of people showed up who didn't go to the funeral, mostly the old crew from the post-Raccoon days. They rented out a bar near Jill's apartment, just some tavern with a stupid name that she liked because it was older than dirt and very British, and Chris spends most of the night breaking up fights. The GPC's picking up the tab through the BSAA, thank God, because a room full of cops, soldiers, and mercenaries can drink like nothing else.

Chris wanders out at maybe three in the morning, when the wake's dwindled down to the die-hards and the people passed out under tables. He doesn't know where he's going until he's there. He sits down, leans against the back of Jill's tombstone, and unscrews the cap on a bottle of bourbon.

The weather today's been discordantly beautiful and right now there's nothing but stars overhead. The world feels like it's mocking him, the same way it always does when it doesn't rain for a funeral.

Claire sits down next to him maybe half an hour later. She's changed into jeans and a black biker jacket.

"Where's Leon?" Chris asks.

"Back at the hotel. He didn't need to be around for this." Claire sighs. "Also, we're not dating."

"You sure? Because the way he looks at you somet--"

"Oh, knock it off." She takes the bottle from him and drinks some bourbon, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and hands it back. "I know how you work. I wanted to be here."

"I think we would've gotten married," Chris says, and taps the tombstone.

"You kinda already were. All you needed was a ring."

"She wanted to have kids, did I tell you that?"

"No, but she did." Claire leans back against Jill's tombstone, copying his posture. "I said you'd probably be the best dad in the world, unless you had a daughter. You'd lock her up until she was thirty."

Chris manages a harsh kind of laugh.

"It's okay, Chris," Claire says. "You took care of everything you could, for everyone you could. There's nothing left for you to do. You can let go."

He looks at her out of the corner of his eye, then brings the bottle of bourbon up to his lips and drinks off the rest in one long pull. When it's empty, which is sooner than he thought it would be, Chris looks down at it and suddenly throws it, as hard as he can, against the nearest tree. It shatters on impact with a sound like a detonation.

"I don't--" He clears his throat against the dull ache in it, and tries again. "You're right. There's nothing left. I don't know what to do now."

Claire puts her arm around his shoulders, and he slumps over, his face in his hands.

"I don't know."

That's all he can think of to say, and all he says, until the sun comes up. Claire stays there with him, holding him close, and then he lets her walk him home.

* * *

Chris doesn't go back to work for two weeks.

When he does, he is in exactly the right mood to hurt someone, and even with Spencer and Wesker dead, there's no shortage of targets.


	19. Intel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "A while back I received some intel that my old partner was still alive. At first I didn't know what to think..."

When foreign businesses began to move into Vietnam in the late eighties, Umbrella was among them, and had well-maintained branch offices on the water in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. They were open, generous, received multiple awards for their humanitarian aid in the region, and funneled human captives from Vietnam and Cambodia into Umbrella facilities throughout Asia for use as test subjects. The exact number will likely never be known.

After the company was shut down, it took about ten minutes for their old in-country shipping networks to get repurposed for smuggling both black-market bioweaponry and Golden Triangle opium. It is not unheard of for one to contaminate the other, which has caused at least three small-scale outbreaks that the BSAA knows about.

The target of the Vietnam operation is a man named Harry Keller, who would be third-generation Umbrella if there still was an Umbrella, and many of the skills he acquired over a decade working for that company transfer surprisingly well to a new career as a small-scale drug kingpin. Between the dosed heroin, Keller's ties to Umbrella, and pure inter-agency politics, Keller has now become the BSAA's problem.

Chris arrives in Hanoi in early June of 2008 and spends six weeks on stakeouts, in a return to the kind of simple cop work he thought he'd left behind years ago. The entire investigation gets set back at the start of July, when one of their key witnesses suddenly emigrates to Canada, buys a boat, and develops amnesia, and that marks the end of Chris's already frayed patience.

* * *

The plan, such as it was, was to come here, find a reason to pick a fight with one of Keller's guards, and use that as a thin justification to invade Keller's offices. Keller works out of what was once the local Umbrella administration building, and there's still a discolored spot on the front face of the offices where the old red-and-white logo used to be, so Chris figures if nothing else he could claim it was some kind of post-trauma flashback. ("Your honor, whenever I see the Umbrella symbol, I just... snap.")

When he gets there, though, the front door is wide open.

Cautiously, Chris glances around, checking the points on the street where he'd expect to see people in ambush positions, but the place is quiet. The locals don't come near this building if they can help it and every other time he's been by here, there were at least two guys outside watching the street.

He walks in, drawing his pistol as he does, and searches the building, moving faster and less cautiously as he goes, until he finally reaches the old executive suite. At this point, he's expecting Keller to be hiding behind the desk with twenty guys and an assault rifle, so he calls for backup right before he goes inside.

The office is kept at seventy degrees, if that, and the cool air hits him with almost physical force as Chris steps inside. His feet sink into expensive carpeting, the furniture is rich brown leather, and there's a man slumped over onto the wide oak desk. Chris crosses the room, points his pistol at the guy with one hand, and takes his pulse with the other. It's Keller, and he's unconscious.

"What kept you?"

Chris whirls, the pistol up in both hands and covering her. It's the woman he saw at Jill's funeral, seated on a couch against the same wall as the door. She wears a summerweight red blazer over a black silk blouse and a dangerously short red skirt, with a pair of four-inch matching heels, and still has an air taser dangling idly from one hand, pointed at the floor.

"My name is Ada Wong," she says. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Chris brings the pistol's sights up to rest over her right eye. "I've heard of you," he says. "What's your stake in this?"

"Keller? He had some information I didn't mind taking, but he's really more of a means to an end. I thought we should meet."

"Why's that?"

Ada produces a thumb drive from the pocket of her blazer and holds it out to him.

"In our business, Chris, it's difficult to say anyone is truly dead," Ada says, "and doubly so if there's no body."

He lowers the gun slightly and stares at her. "Wait, are you--?"

"What I have to say on the subject is all on this drive. Don't take my word for it. I know what that's worth."

Behind them, Keller stirs and murmurs something. They ignore him.

Chris takes his left hand off the pistol and accepts the thumb drive from her. "You aren't doing this out of the goodness of your heart."

"No."

"Will you tell me what you get out of this?"

"No."

He looks down at the thumb drive, then back at Ada. "If this is some game you're running on me, I'm going to find you again, and I will kill you."

"I'd expect nothing less." She stands up, drops the air taser on the chair she's just vacated, and smooths out the skirt. "Good hunting, Chris. I'll be rooting for you."

She walks out the door, right as tires squeal outside. The building is full of both BSAA agents and local police about ten seconds later, and none of them have seen a woman in red.

* * *

When Chris gets back to London, he has Quint Ketcham do a full security sweep of both his computer and his apartment. He listens to Quint's stream-of-consciousness babbling about virus scanners and password integrity and nods at the right moments just as if it makes sense to him, then hands Quint a case of his favorite energy drink and sends him on his way.

Chris draws the blinds, locks the door, disconnects his Internet cable, and plugs Ada's drive into his computer. Quint's programs scan it, it comes up clean, and Chris opens it up.

The drive's full of files that neither Ada nor Chris are supposed to have. The first document is a dossier on an unidentified blonde woman, who's a person of interest in several thefts and assassinations throughout North America, Europe, and northern Africa. In each case, the site's security was evaded or defeated in record time or unusual ways, such as by scaling the outside of a skyscraper, and recovered items from the crime scenes indicate the use of specialized, expensive hardware.

She's good, but it's nearly impossible to enter an urban area at all without being seen or recorded by something. She's tied to each criminal act through feeds from traffic and ATM cameras and a single eyewitness, a janitor, who's helped to provide a police sketch. The woman is blonde and a couple of inches taller, but the face is right. She could be Jill, or a close relative of Jill's.

Chris leans back in his computer chair, in the apartment he moved to after the funeral. It's still full of boxes he hasn't unpacked, because he's rarely here, and because anything he's owned for more than three years is an emotional land mine.

The law in most nations is that a person cannot be declared legally dead until seven years after the date of their disappearance. With Jill, it took three months, start to finish. If Chris had been in anything close to his right mind, he'd have noticed and dealt with that before now, but he went straight from grief to anger to continually distracting himself with other people's problems. He's been running from this for two years.

Chris has not had a great deal of interest in his personal survival for a while now. Looking at the police sketch, he feels that slowly begin to change.


	20. Interlude 1 - Games For More Than Two Players

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I know of a certain unscrupulous individual who could put the information on the streets, for the right price. He is the kind that does not care who he talks to. What made the individual I found of such importance is that he is in the employ of a female spy who has regular dealings with Wesker."

"...oh, one other thing," Ricardo Irving says.

"Mm?" Ada's more interested in her endive salad than in this conversation. Irving is a bottom-feeder, and even his voice is somehow greasy, but every so often, he comes up with a gem.

"This guy got in touch with me through an old contact in Germany. Total amateur. I almost didn't get back to him, but he put big money down, you know? Anyway, he's telling me that he knows where Ozwell Spencer is."

"That is interesting," Ada says, "but it's also quite common."

"Yeah, yeah. Here's the fun part. His name's Patrick, he says he works for the old man, he's his butler, and that the old man wants to get in touch with Wesker. Prodigal son returns."

Ada puts down her fork. "Go on."

"Thought you'd like that. Anyway, the guy who put him on me is way out of the loop, you know? Didn't hear about your, ah, issues with Al. So I'm saying, to you, what's this worth?"

"Double standard rate," Ada says without hesitation. "Get me the location before you think of telling Wesker, and it's triple on confirmation."

Irving whistles.

"Do we have a deal?"

"Sure, sister, that suits me fine."

* * *

The mansion is tucked into a nearly uninhabited corner of the Bavarian Alps. It's difficult to reach and well away from civilization, which makes an approach tricky but navigable.

That may be why the security's a joke. Ada evades a few patrols of bored-looking German and Dutch mercenaries, awkward and uncomfortable in poorly-fit gray blazers, and splices a wireless transmitter into the mansion's security feed. Two days later, she's up and running in a rented room in the nearest village, posing as yet another Chinese visitor on a castle tour.

Her original theory upon seeing Spencer's hideaway was that he was having supplies flown in by helicopter, but after a few hours of watching him wheel around yet another poor copy of George Trevor's mansion, Ada is forced to revise it. Spencer is clearly living entirely off of spite and barely restrained rage. He looks like his old self after spending three days in a food dehydrator.

Once she's satisfied that it actually is Spencer, Ada makes two phone calls on a burner cell. One is to arrange a very expensive wire transfer to Ricardo Irving's offshore accounts. The other, once she hooks up the voice disguiser, is to the BSAA's home offices in London.

"Good evening," she says to their voice mail. "Ozwell Spencer can be found in southwestern Bavaria at the following coordinates..."

* * *

"You knew Jill Valentine?" Leon asks.

"Not in person," Ada says, "but enough to pay my respects."

"Really."

Ada chuckles softly.

"They followed an anonymous tip to Spencer," Leon says conversationally. "If they'd known for sure that it was legitimate, they might've brought more people, but it was just due diligence."

"If," Ada says. "Might. But."

"Yeah, I know."

Clive O'Brian is across the cemetery, giving a eulogy for Jill. They're too far away to hear it clearly, but he takes a lot of long pauses. It's difficult to tell at this distance whether he's choking up or he just always looks like that. Ada suspects it's the latter.

"Let me ask you a question," Leon says.

"Of course."

"Did you do this?"

She takes a long pause.

O'Brian steps out from behind the podium and down among the mourners, where his people clap him on the back as he goes. The crowd murmurs, waiting to see who'll take the next turn. Most look to Chris, seated front row center next to Claire, but Chris isn't moving.

"What would you do if I said yes?" Ada glances at Leon. He's watching the crowd. "Would you arrest me?"

"No. I guess I wouldn't."

"Then yes. If you thought I intended this result, however..." She makes an offhand gesture that encompasses the funeral and its mourners.

Leon nods.

The next speaker steps up behind the podium and it's Barry Burton. There was some doubt about O'Brian, but Burton is openly weeping. One of his daughters stands next to him, holding his arm, and Barry pats her awkwardly on the head.

"Did they ever find the bodies?" Ada asks.

"No."

"Yet here we are," she says, "at a funeral, just as if they had."

"You noticed that too, huh?"

"Almost as if someone wanted this wrapped up as quickly as possible."

"Yeah." Leon looks at her. "Are you with me on this?"

"In my own way," she says.

"Same as ever, then."

She smiles at him.


	21. Interlude 2 - Fight Scene

Two years later, Ada starts awake at two o'clock in the morning.

She's in a hotel in Shanghai that isn't up to her usual standards. It's perfect for her cover identity, though, who is a Canadian businesswoman with cash flow problems. This hotel is cheap, but not too cheap; it projects an ideal blend of frugality and self-respect, clear evidence to an indecisive investor that she's worth taking seriously. A lot of foreign businessmen stay here for that precise reason.

At first, she can't figure out why she's awake, but Ada calmly thinks it through: What's Wrong With This Picture, espionage edition. The walls are laughably thin, and when she went to sleep, she could hear snoring, muted conversation, and television sounds from either direction. Now there's nothing but ambient noise from the street outside.

Ada stands up, throws on a pair of slacks and a short-sleeved silk blouse, and grabs her suitcase.

She's already moving towards the door when the window shatters.

Something hits the floor, bounces once, and explodes into smoke. Ada dives for the bathroom.

Clothes and toiletries scatter across the counter as she yanks out the suitcase's false bottom. Inside, she's stashed a miniaturized model of her old grapple gun, not as powerful but much easier to travel with, and a short-barreled .45 with an integrated suppressor. Both are based on old Umbrella designs, made largely of an alloy they were perfecting at the time of the company's dissolution, and neither registers on conventional security scanners. She hooks the grapple gun onto her waistband, chambers a round in the .45, and pockets two spare magazines.

Someone lands in the room outside, almost too quietly to be heard over street noise, and Ada fires the .45 into the ceiling, just to let her mystery assassin know that she's armed and waiting. Even with the suppressor, the gunfire in this enclosed space sounds like an artillery strike. She fires four more times anyway, chewing four ragged holes through the hotel room's door.

When she comes out of the bathroom, Ada puts her last two rounds back into the room, firing for effect, and she catches a quick glimpse of someone in leather who's taken cover behind the bed. Sadly, that does nothing to answer the question of who this is. The late (?) Albert Wesker has many legacies, but one of them is making half the mercenaries in the bioweapons business dress like Goth bikers. His death was likely a net loss for the leather goods industry.

_One thing at a time._

Ada steps into a front kick, which takes most of the weakened hotel door out of its frame. That's enough for her to get through it, and she hits the floor outside right as her mysterious assailant fires a submachinegun at her. The bullets punch through the door of the room across the hall.

By rights, everyone on this floor should be, at bare minimum, screaming. Instead, there's nothing.

Ada scrambles down the hallway and slips into a small alcove twenty feet from her room, where the icebox and vending machines are kept.

"I don't suppose," Ada calls out, "you'd be willing to tell me what this is about. You will have to be very specific."

She ejects the empty magazine, reloads, and chambers a round.

"Police response time in this neighborhood is roughly ninety seconds," Ada says, and she says it in that particular way she's known for, where whatever she says comes off as mockery. "We have about a minute to resolve this." She inches up next to the vending machine, where she can glance out into the hall without exposing herself.

The assassin comes out into the hall just as the smoke from the grenade sets off the overhead sprinklers. She wears a tight leather bodysuit and holds a submachinegun in either hand, with long blonde hair that's soaked to her shoulders. Her eyes quickly fixate on Ada's position.

She's got at least one more grenade on her that Ada can see, hanging off a black combat harness strapped on over the suit, and that limits Ada's options.

Ada fires twice. Neither shot hits nor was intended to, but the assassin reacts in a way Ada wasn't expecting. She doesn't throw herself prone or against the wall, but instead, pushes off her left leg and brings up her shoulder, ramming through the nearest room's door like it's made out of balsa wood.

"Hm," Ada says out loud.

The door to the stairwell is twenty yards behind her. Ada fires again, which punches a divot out of the doorjamb of the assassin's room, and breaks into a careful backwards run. She's moving to the relative safety of the next hotel room's doorway, in a standard tactical withdrawal.

Then the assassin comes out into the hallway again, firing both guns at once in exactly the way that professionals don't.

Ada hits the floor with her hands cupped over her ears as everything above her gets chopped to sawdust. Any ordinary woman firing those guns on full-auto would've put most of her bullets into the ceiling, but the assassin seems to come from a magical land without muzzle climb or recoil.

Both her guns run dry in under four seconds, and Ada's about to exploit that when her field of vision is entirely filled by the assassin's foot. The world spins, Ada's face goes numb, and the next thing she knows, she's lying flat on her back in the middle of the hallway.

She still has her pistol, though, so Ada brings it up and aims down its sights at where the assassin used to be. Naturally, she isn't there anymore, and picks Ada up by the front of her blouse with one hand. She slams Ada against the wall, Ada's head rocks back, and she gets a big mouthful of chemical-tasting water from the sprinklers.

Ada coughs, shakes her head, and looks into the eyes of the woman who's about to kill her.

"Jill Valentine," Ada says.

Her mouth's running a couple of seconds ahead of the rest of her. The hair's wrong, but at this distance, Jill's unmistakable.

Jill has one hand back, ready to deliver a palm strike that'll drive Ada's nose into her brain, but she's frozen in place, like hearing her own name was a magic spell.

"I'm a fan of your work," Ada says. Her nose is bleeding and the impact against the wall bruised her diaphragm; it hurts to breathe. _Buy time._ "I suppose the career change makes sense, though. You know what they say; once you're in your thirties, it's time to settle down and think about making some money."

Jill's free hand shakes. Her mouth gradually curls into a feral snarl that looks utterly out of place on her.

"If you don't mind some professional advice, though, woman to woman," Ada says, "the next time you intend to kill someone, don't get this close to them, or they can do something like this."

She holds up a grenade pin.

Jill looks down at the grenade on her belt, back at Ada, and drops her. Ada hits the floor on both knees and pitches over; Jill throws the grenade away from them as hard as she can.

Ada's hoping it's a smoke bomb and, given the kind of day this has been so far, expecting a concussion or fragmentation grenade.

It's a flashbang.

The world now sounds like a radio turned to a dead frequency. Ada groans, staggers to her feet, and looks at Jill, who's bent over with both hands over her eyes.

It occurs to Ada that she still has four rounds in the .45 and a clear shot at the back of Jill's head.

Instead, she breaks into as much of a sprint as she's capable of, straight towards the stairwell at the end of the hallway. As she runs, she flips on the .45's safety catch and swaps it to her offhand, and once she's standing in the stairwell, she pulls the grapple gun off her waistband and fires it into the far wall.

Then she dives over the rail and into space, right as the door crashes open behind her.

The grapple's line unwinds with a high shriek, just as it always does when it's wet, and Ada pulls back on it almost immediately. Four stories later, she starts to slow down, and by the time she's passing the second-floor landing, she's able to survive the drop to the floor.

She's expecting to see Jill racing down the stairs after her. She doesn't.

Ada shoves the .45 into the back of her pants, although not without an inward shudder at doing something this amateurish, and hooks the grapple gun on right next to it. Her blouse isn't quite long or loose enough to effectively cover both her guns, but she's soaked to the bone and the blouse is half-torn down the front. Even a professional can sometimes miss obvious things if there's something else to stare at.

She pushes the lobby door open with both hands, staggering with pain and exhaustion that's very easy to fake, and stumbles right into three hotel security officers. They look at her, then at each other, and all start forward to give her what help they can.

"Please," she says in Mandarin, "I woke up and there was a fire..."

It's not her best performance. The accent's wrong, she still doesn't have her wind back so her intonation's off, she's obviously been in a fight, and a real cop would spot her poorly concealed handgun. This identity is blown as soon as someone reviews the hotel's security footage, and so is the job she was in Shanghai to do.

Assuming the job was legitimate in the first place.

The security officers buy her act without question, though, and escort her out of the building. They sit her down in the back of an ambulance with a blanket, a cup of strong tea, and an understanding paramedic, and the moment no one's looking, she disappears.

It's an automatic process from here. She's got another bag stashed near the airport, complete with another false bottom to hide the guns and a new set of papers. She catches the news while standing in an airport terminal; the broadcast mentions a spectacular amount of damage to the hotel, most of it from the sprinklers, but no fatalities and no known suspects besides the woman she used to be.

Six hours later, Stephanie Chan, late of San Francisco, is on a flight to Sydney.

* * *

"Lemme get this straight," Ricardo says. "You _want_ to find Redfield?"

"I do."

"Don't get me wrong, doll, he's easy to track, kinda like a tornado or somethin'. I'm just not clear on why you'd want to."

"The basis of our working relationship, Ricardo, is that I ask for things and you get them to me without asking questions," Ada says, "or telling other parties what I am interested in. Has that changed?"

There's a moment of hesitation. "No. But the last time you and I did business like that, there was... well, there was fallout, honey. It's still falling, in fact."

"Oh, I'm quite aware."

"So I can't talk you out of--"

"No."

"Dammit." Ricardo sighs. "Last report indicates he was assigned to Hanoi."

 _Why, look at how quickly you came up with that._ "Hm. Harry Keller?"

"None other. Look, Redfield's a mad dog, honey. They don't put him on anything where they'll mind some collateral damage, because there _will_ be collateral damage. He's been a goddamn lunatic since Valentine died."

There's a momentary hesitation between the words "since" and "Valentine" that Ada catches immediately, but only because she's expecting it.

"I know how to deal with mad dogs, Ricardo," Ada says. "You give them what they're looking for."


	22. Africa

"Why aren't you over there?" Sheva asks.

They're in Praia in Cape Verde, the closest city to the volcano where Wesker died, waiting for exfiltration.

"She doesn't want me to be," Chris says. He's slumped in the passenger bay of Josh's helicopter, tired and sore to the bone but too wired to sleep. He's got what feels like a few thousand dollars of dental work ahead of him, he's bruised and nursing contusions from one end of his body to the other, and it's all completely irrelevant. Every punch and stab and gunshot that Chris landed on Wesker, every incremental bit of payback for the last ten years, was accompanied by a jolt of adrenaline that could've launched a space shuttle. He's still riding that down.

Jill got out of the chopper the moment it was on the ground. Now she stands at the edge of the helipad, looking out at the ocean. It's as far away as she can get from them without jumping into the sea.

She's changed some. For one thing, she actually is a few inches taller, although some of that's the heels on her suit, and she holds herself differently. There's some training behind it that she didn't have before.

"You haven't said two words to her since Wesker died. How can you know that?"

"We were partners for most of ten years, Sheva," Chris says. "I know Jill like I know myself."

"You're sure?"

"I am."

Sheva nods. Her neck's bruised from Wesker's fingers and she's walking with a limp, but she came out of this better than he did.

"You did great back there, by the way," Chris says. "How's it feel to save the world?"

"I don't think that's really sunk in yet. I'm waiting for it to be okay to relax."

"Yeah. That'll happen eventually."

"Listen to you. How many times have you saved the world, Mr. Redfield?"

He chuckles. "I don't know. Maybe twice. Depends on what Alexia was going to do next."

Jill turns around and makes eye contact with him, then turns back towards the water. Chris's mood turns dark, and despite what he just said, he's about to stand up and go over to her.

Josh gets up from the pilot's seat and comes into the passenger area. "They're ten minutes out."

Chris shakes his head. "Right. Thanks, Josh."

Josh tracks his line of sight over to Jill, then grins at him. "She's as tough as they always said. You should have seen her back at the facility."

"Yeah?"

"It was like watching a hurricane, my friend. Nothing was going to stop her."

"She saved our lives with that message," Sheva says. "And the world, too."

"Yeah," Chris says. "She'll do that."

* * *

The West African branch office in Casablanca has a small commissary on the first floor near its dormitory. Sheva comes in and sees Chris sitting in the corner of the room having a drink, so she sits down on the other side of the table.

It feels like it's been a long time since they haven't held weapons, like that first meeting in the village was years ago, on a different planet than this. Sheva wears a loose lavender blouse and white shorts, and she's taken her hair down. She's twenty-three, the same age he was when he joined STARS, and she actually looks it right now.

"Josh says you think I walk on water," she says, amused.

"He's exaggerating, but you're a hell of an operative." Chris slides an empty glass across the table to her. "I said as much during the debriefing. You deserve it."

"Thanks."

"Particularly how you were willing to put up with me."

"Oh, you're no trial." Sheva pours herself some of his bourbon. "It was adorable, really. You were trying so hard to convince me you were a cynical old bastard."

"I _am_ a--"

"No." She points at him with the hand holding the glass. "None of us are cynical or we wouldn't do this job. You aren't fooling anyone."

"I don't know if I'd go that far," Chris says. "I've known a lot of guys who do this kind of work because it's what they're good at, and if they did anything else, it'd mean they were starting from scratch. For a while, I thought that was me. Too stubborn and dumb to quit."

"If you were a cop or something, I'd accept that, but not the BSAA." Sheva sips some bourbon, and swallows with a wince and a shake of her head. When she speaks again, her voice is rougher. "Is it really very different in North America?"

Chris laughs without humor. "The government there treats us like a case of the clap."

"We were heroes here," Sheva says softly. "It's the worst job in the world, but it's good work, worth doing. You have to be an idealist or you wouldn't last a week. You'd taken a couple of hits, but you're still holding onto that, the same as the rest of us, and I knew that the moment we met."

Chris nods. "Maybe there's something to that."

"There is."

He reaches out with his glass and clinks it against Sheva's. "Cheers."

"Cheers."

Chris tosses back the rest of his bourbon. "What's next for you?"

"I'm not sure. We'll need to do some recruiting. The European and Australian branches are sending in some placeholder agents to take care of the day-to-day, but that won't last forever." Sheva takes another measured sip. "That's more Josh's specialty than mine. He's very good at finding talented people in the most unlikely places."

"I can pull some strings, see if anyone's up for a transfer."

Sheva shakes her head and puts down her drink. "No, we need Africans here. Both for the language and simply for the culture. It's important that we be seen to govern our own soil, especially now."

"All right. I'll still see what I can do."

"You don't owe me anything, you know."

"No, I feel as though I do." Chris leans back in his chair, with one hand keeping the glass flat on the table. "You ended up in the middle of an old grudge match. You didn't have a stake in this, but you nearly died seeing it through."

"It wasn't for your sake, Chris." She smiles and shakes her head. "Typical American. It's all about you."

"You caught me. In some ways, we're all the same."

"Not all of you." Sheva stands up and stretches, then winces and puts a hand to her side.

"You okay?"

"I'm on the mend. Nothing for most of it but time and rest, they told me." She hesitates, then takes her glass back from him and drinks off what's left. Sheva sets it down with a clack. "I'm going to bed," she says. "Want to come with me?"

Sheva's going for casual but ends up with something south of that. There's a note in her voice that hits him right in the stomach, that unexpected rush when something like this comes out of nowhere, and it takes him a second to remember how to talk.

Finally, though, he shakes his head. "I can't. I'm sorry."

He knows what reaction that's going to get before his words hit air: confusion, then a question she doesn't ask and acceptance, all within maybe five seconds. Sheva nods, then stands up.

"G'night, then," she says.

"Good night, Sheva."

* * *

"It's not your fault," Chris says.

He hands Jill a cup of coffee and sits down next to her.

The window in front of them affords them a scenic view of maybe three hundred yards of clean concrete. The BSAA's anti-outbreak protocols are stringent to the point of paranoia, with no plants or landscaping allowed within half a mile of a lab building, which often means their facilities are a little depressing. This one, tucked into a barren canyon in the Atlas Mountains, certainly is.

"Don't blame yourself for what you did," Chris says. "It was all Wesker. I know that. Okay?"

She turns back to the window. One of the side effects of Wesker's experiments was that she's lost most of her natural pigmentation, and she didn't have that much to start with. Jill looks pale, withdrawn, and much younger somehow. It's hard not to treat her with kid gloves.

"You know," she says quietly, "I knew Wesker hated us, but he always covered it pretty well. Like he was too good to show any emotion other than amusement."

"Yeah."

"I didn't realize just how much he hated us until I woke up after the fall."

"You don't have to talk about this if you don't--"

"No. No, I need to get this out, and I'm sure as hell not talking about this to some random shrink." Jill clutches the coffee in both hands. "He never touched me. I think that's important to tell you."

Chris doesn't say anything. He's used to this kind of anger, where it's after the fact and the person who he'd like to go after is long gone. He's even used to having it towards Wesker, from those five months when he'd thought the bastard was dead.

"I think he got a lot more out of making me do his dirty work for him," Jill says. "Corporate espionage, a couple of assassinations. That outbreak in Oslo was me. He had me steal a Matisse for him just to see if I could. If he gave me an order, I obeyed it, and sometimes it was... almost fun. It was a new challenge." She looks sideways at him without raising her head. "They said you went berserk," Jill says.

"Yeah. I did. For a long time."

"I figured you'd be the one who found me." She's folded in on herself, her arms tight against her torso and her legs together. He wants to reach out to her, but a lot of her body language is still the same, and right now it says hands off. "Wesker always had you under surveillance, just to make sure he knew where you were."

Chris keeps quiet. It's difficult.

"That meant I knew you were still out there. Probably not okay, but at least alive, and that meant sooner or later you'd find him, and me. I couldn't do much besides hope, but at least I had that."

"I got intel that you were alive." His voice is thick. "I couldn't die until I knew what had happened to you."

Jill nods.

"They want to keep you under quarantine for a while. Wesker's files on you had a lot to say."

"I know. I get that." Jill makes eye contact with him for the first time since he sat down. "This isn't me."

Chris has nothing to say to that, so he keeps quiet.

"This doesn't feel like me. My body isn't right, my own thoughts..." Her voice is shaking. "I don't know how much of what I'm saying is me anymore, or if it's just someone _pretending_ to be me..."

Chris holds out one hand.

She looks at it for a few seconds, but then she takes it and squeezes it.

"Two years," Chris says, "and you still fought him. You're still the strongest person I know."

Jill doesn't say anything.

"Maybe you'll want to talk about it someday. Maybe you never will. Either way, you know I'm here."

"Yeah." She squeezes his hand again. "I guess I do."


	23. Necessary Changes

When he gets back to London, Chris asks for and gets a small private office, the better to work on his write-up of the Kijuju disaster.

Chris has never enjoyed this part of the job. It was something he could cope with when he was simply a kind of cop, but since that initial report to Irons after the Spencer mansion, he has yet to be on an investigation of any kind that didn't, when written down, sound absurd.

He's double-checking his facts against Josh's via a voice chat program on his terminal when an early draft of the BSAA's internal dossier on Jill lands in his email. Chris almost sends it to the trash without opening it, but he has to read it. It's all part of the job.

It feels just as much like an invasion of her privacy as he thought it would. The BSAA's biologists have been exhaustive and thorough in their examinations, both for its own sake and out of the vain hope of learning more about the P30, and the dossier contains a number of photographs of her without clothes, or in an ill-fitting hospital gown. It's about as erotic as an autopsy and there are similar dossiers on him and every other BSAA agent that are just as explicit, but it being done to Jill makes Chris want to go down to the bio-lab and punch out neckbeards until one thinks to apologize.

Beyond that, he's not getting anything out of this. The first couple of drafts of the biologists' reports are always written as if no one will ever read them except other biologists. Chris has picked up a lot of the science behind his job over the years, but he's just not this document's target audience.

Chris starts to close the file, but does a double-take at one of the photographs.

Her scars are gone.

Jill had several, and was sensitive about the points of vulnerability they represented: faint bite marks on both forearms from back in the mansion, a poorly-healed puncture below her collarbone where the Nemesis had almost killed her, a shallow furrow on her side above her hip that came with a story she'd never gotten around to telling. None of them are there anymore. The only marks on Jill are the bone-deep wounds where the P30 implant used to be.

Chris picks up the phone and makes a call down to the R&D lab.

* * *

"Okay, it's like this," Quint says.

He's gotten the usual night crew at R&D to take a break for an hour while he puts Jill's dossier up on the big board, so they're alone in the lab. His current system is all touchscreens and projections, which he manipulates with a casual proficiency that Chris can't begin to comprehend.

"We, meaning the BSAA and all agencies with which we collaborate, know of about five people who've managed to live through actual, for-real human augmentation, defined here as retaining full, conscious control of themselves and of their abilities after the mutation kicked in." Quint holds up his hand, folding down fingers as he reels off names. "The late Albert Wesker. The late Jack Krauser. The late Alexia Ashford, although that's stretching it. Manuela Hidalgo. And now Jill."

"She's mutated?" Chris asks.

"Kind of." Quint opens a couple of windows. "You can't just upgrade one thing about a person, right? It's like cyborgs--" he looks at Chris and sees a flash of incomprehension, "--Jesus, Chris, see a movie now and again, willya?"

"They don't really seem to make Westerns anymore."

Quint rolls his eyes and looks down at the computer for a second. "Okay, then it's like a building. You've gotta have a foundation or the whole thing falls over. Let's take Krauser as an example. The Kennedy Report says he had some kind of mutant arm. Right?"

"Right."

"But Kennedy says he was also making thirty-foot vertical jumps and he was pretty much bulletproof. Why's that?" Quint points at Chris. "Because you have to have the infrastructure. If the rest of Krauser wasn't tough enough to support the weight of the arm and the pull of its enhanced musculature, and he didn't have added nerve conduction and probably a higher metabolic yield, it wouldn't work. It'd just... fall off or something, and that's if you're lucky."

"And that's what happened to Jill?"

"That's the theory, if I'm reading this right." It's a weak attempt at modesty. He knows he's reading it right. "See this?" He taps two windows and they show up side by side on the screen. One's a scan of an old paper document, and one's a digital file from Jill's dossier. "Compared to her most recent physical before the op with Spencer in '06, she's thirty-one pounds heavier but you wouldn't know it by looking at her. It's all from higher bone and muscle density. Her skin's tougher, too, and she heals at an accelerated rate. Pretty much everything about her on a biological level is anywhere from a little to a lot better, because it has to be to support her elevated levels of activity."

"Yeah. I saw that in the ruins. It took almost lethal force just to slow her down."

"I would've loved to have been there for that," Quint says, not looking away from the big board. "It must've been like a Hong Kong action flick."

"Quint--"

"I know, I know." He flicks through a couple of screens. "But here's the thing, Chris. You can't just flip a switch on that and suddenly she's a superhuman. The P30 might've done some of it, but there's, uh, evidence of some surgical assistance." Quint taps the screen, and an X-ray of Jill's leg gets bigger. "Those missing scars you mentioned? If I had to guess, I'd say that she grew new skin, probably pretty quickly." He gets quieter as he's talking, excited at first but slowly realizing what and who he's talking about. "See how the femur's got a couple of healed breaks in it? They're in exactly the same place in both legs, which looks a lot like they were done on purpose. Same thing with her arms, and the big bones in her calves. You see that kind of surgery done sometimes with certain kinds of growth disorders."

"So the drug... regrew her?"

"That's a vast simplification," Quint says, and turns around to make eye contact, "but yeah. Kinda."

"She said something like that. That it didn't really feel like her body anymore."

"Well, sure." Quint looks back at the screen. "That's because it isn't."


	24. Alone

They're in what's slowly becoming his office in the BSAA's London branch, a few days before Christmas. It's bitter cold and slate gray outside, with dirty snow spitting out of the sky at irregular intervals. It's been a little under three months since Kijuju.

Jill sits in one of his client chairs, her hair dyed an artificial, muddy brown. She wears jeans and a turtleneck sweater, covered from wrist to neck to ankle, and the security pass on a lanyard around her neck says "VISITOR." She must've insisted upon that.

"I need to... be somewhere else," Jill says, "somewhere that we didn't tear apart back in the day. We never did get around to Paris."

"Nope. Claire kind of took care of that for us."

Jill manages a wan smile.

Chris sits back down behind his desk and folds his hands on its surface. "Whatever you want to do, Jill. I'll help you make it happen."

"I appreciate that."

They're quiet for a minute. There's a lot not being said.

"How's work?" Jill asks.

"Surprisingly quiet." Chris is almost relieved. It's a safe topic of conversation. "I'm going to end up changing some things, though. I think Josh had the right idea."

"About what?"

"Unit cohesion, mostly." He hasn't talked about this with many other people. "His teams at the West African branch just work better than ours do. He's pretty good at getting them to think of the organization like a brotherhood, like these men around you are more than just other soldiers. We recruit and get applicants from so many different agencies that our units don't have anything close to that kind of bond."

"You can't really force that kind of thing."

"No, but you can emphasize it. Take them out drinking together, make them get to know one another before they have to depend on each other, and rotate groups between posts rather than individual personnel." Chris shrugs. "We have to do something. The average operational lifetime of a guy in one of the squads is under a year."

"What happened to not wanting to be part of the command element?"

"A lot's changed in the last few years, Jill."

He says it without thinking and immediately wishes he hadn't. Jill's face freezes as she covers up her reaction.

"I mean--"

"No," she says. "You're right." Jill stands up. "I should--"

Chris doesn't say a few different things, and that lasts up until she reaches the office door.

"I could quit," he says.

She stops with her hand on the doorknob.

"I could come with you," Chris says.

"And do what?" Jill asks.

"I don't know. I'd figure it out. We would."

"No. You're saying that because you think I want to hear it."

She lowers her head, like she was going to let it rest right there, but then looks back up at him.

"I know what you want to do. You want to take as much of this on yourself as you can, but you can't. This is on me. Either I can live with myself now, or I can't, but--"

Chris stands up fast enough that he nearly flips the desk and comes halfway around it towards her. "I want to make something very clear to you," he says. "If you kill yourself over this, that means that after all these years and us stuffing him into a fucking volcano, Wesker still won. And that's unacceptable."

Now she's angry. Also, she just broke his doorknob. "You don't have the right to tell me what to do. You have no idea--"

"I have every right. You owe me your life and I owe you mine. Maybe you've got some debts to repay, to the people he had you hurt, but that isn't how you do it. I promise you something, Jill, even if this is the last conversation we have with each other: if you take the coward's way out, I will follow you to hell and I will _never_ stop kicking your ass."

She stares at him, and after what seems like a long time, Jill grins at him. It's weak, but it's there. "I'm going to guess that sounded a lot better in your head."

"It wasn't that bad."

"Kind of melodramatic. I can tell you've been bossing soldiers around."

"They seem to react well to it."

"Of course they do." Jill lets go of the doorknob, which slides out of the door in two pieces. "Shit."

"Not a problem. The doors in this building are kind of cheap."

"No, they aren't. My fine motor control's still not..." She stares at her hand and makes a fist. "Look," she says, "I just need to be alone for a while. No therapists, no sympathy, nobody trying to help me. Can you understand that?"

"I think so."

"Good. That's..." She looks back at him. "Are you waiting for me?"

The question catches him off-guard. "I..."

"Don't."

He has nothing to say.

"Call me if you need me, I will always have your back if you need it, but..." Jill shakes her head. "There isn't enough of me left. I'm not your old partner, I haven't taken a hard hit, I'm not getting over this. I'm somebody else."

He almost says he understands, but he knows he doesn't; what he understands is an informed guess. He stays quiet.

"So... just live your life, okay? Get one if you have to, but do whatever it takes. I want you to be happy. Can you do that for me?"

"I... don't know if I know how."

"Learn." She reaches into the hole in the door and pushes on the latch to open it. "I'll keep in touch. If it gets bad, I'll call for help. Okay?"

"Whatever you need, Jill," Chris says, and watches her go.

In the empty office, he goes back to his chair and sits down, then turns it slightly and looks out the window. The view isn't great, but he can just about see Jill as she walks into the car park across the street. She doesn't look back.

"Whatever you need," he says quietly.


	25. The Story So Far

"How's Jill doing?" Sheva asks.

"Not well," Chris says, "but she'll get through it."

"Really?"

"I hope so."

They're standing guard as a few hundred researchers and forensic scientists dismantle the old Umbrella facility in the KAZ. The old lift platform in the test subject storage area is immobilized on its lowest level, and a series of construction gangplanks allow access to the few cryogenic pods that are still occupied.

"The early estimate is that we're going to be able to wrap up something like six thousand missing persons cases with this," Sheva says, making conversation. She's dressed in light body armor and holds a scoped rifle, with an MP5 slung off one shoulder. The pods that are still occupied usually hold corpses, but there have been exceptions, both monstrous and otherwise, and they're one of six teams in position to prevent further incidents. "Interpol has a team coming in the day after tomorrow."

"We always wondered where they put them all, back in the day," Chris says, as much to himself as to Sheva. "There were a couple of their facilities that did a pretty good sideline in 'disappearing' people, did you know that? If you wanted someone to go away, you could slip Umbrella's people about ten grand and the next thing you know, they're a human test subject. Lot of mob informants went that way."

"I wish I could say that's at all surprising."

"Of course, we couldn't prove it."

Sheva moves a little closer to him and puts a hand on his arm. "Chris, if you need to talk about it..."

"About what?"

"Whatever it is that's obviously bothering you. Is it Jill, or...?"

"It's because you can't dredge lava."

Sheva looks confused.

"I wish we'd killed him back in the hangar," Chris says, "or before he'd had the chance to crash the plane. I wish there was a body."

"Wesker's dead, Chris," Sheva says. "You've read the reports. We've learned a lot about his shipping operations that he'd have preferred we not know. Were he alive and able, there'd be at least some pushback."

"There was a point where the crowning moment of his entire plan was setting himself up to be stabbed through the chest," Chris says. "I wouldn't be surprised if he had a clone in storage for this or, I don't know, a robot body..." He trails off. "I'm being stupid, aren't I."

Sheva's entertained. "I don't know about that. Maybe ridiculous, even by our standards, but not often stupid."

He shakes his head. "It'll take me a long time to accept that he's dead." _If he is._ "I spent a lot of years chasing him down."

"You know, about that." Sheva comes up next to him and leans on the safety rail. "You owe me that story."

"Hm?"

"When we were in the ship, near the end," she says. "You promised you'd tell me all about it."

"Yeah. I guess I did."

Sheva checks her watch. "We're off shift in two hours. I think it's time I held you to that."

"All right," Chris says. "It's a date."

She smiles at his use of the word.

* * *

Every BSAA temporary operation site in the world is initially built to protocol: two dozen heavy-duty prefabricated trailers arranged in a vaguely circular pattern, with half of the gaps between them blocked with heavy debris and short chain-link fences. The idea's to funnel an attack by the most common kinds of infected into a few predictable bottlenecks, so a team can easily hold their position against them until air support can be mobilized. The plan was originally designed with T-Virus carriers in mind, but it works reasonably well against baseline Majini.

This one's been here for a few months, so it's lived-in by now: in-jokes and graffiti scrawled on trailer walls and doors in black marker, fire pits, milk crates and wire spools as improvised exterior furniture, dry-erase boards in prominent locations with the kitchen and patrol rotations. The personnel come from all over, BSAA operatives and civilian volunteers both, and Chris hears snatches of conversation in maybe ten languages as he follows Sheva through the camp.

"Lieutenant Alomar," one of them says, and snaps off a crisp salute, which she returns.

"You did get promoted," Chris says.

"You pushed hard enough for it." Sheva gives him a mock-dirty look and unlocks the door to her quarters. It's small and Spartan, like anyone else's, with a bunk, a desk, a mini-fridge, and a footlocker inside. A battered laptop sits on top of the desk, hooked up to a cell phone.

"We already had this conversation," Chris says. "You deserved a step up."

"This doesn't feel like one. I'll be happy to get back to life as an investigator," Sheva says. She unbuckles her body armor and slips it off, cracking her back with pleasure as soon as she does. "I don't trust anyone else to see this done, but I keep thinking, what else am I missing because I'm here?"

Chris grins. "I know that feeling."

"Of course you do."

He takes off his own gear while Sheva kneels and takes a bottle of Scotch out from under the bed, along with a stack of red plastic tumblers in a cellophane sleeve. She pours two glasses and hands him one, then sits down on the bunk, legs crossed.

"The good stuff," Chris says, and sips some.

"That swill you were drinking in Casablanca is like turpentine," Sheva says. "I have better taste." She pulls her pillow over to herself and puts it against the small of her back, getting comfortable. "So."

"Yeah." Chris sits down in her desk chair. "Me and Wesker. And Jill, and the STARS..."

* * *

He's never actually sat down and told someone the whole story all at once.

A researcher could probably put most of it together with a lot of effort. He's written enough reports and been subjected to enough interviews to make sure of that, particularly in the days after Umbrella was shut down. That version would be boiled down to essentials and missing some classified information, though, and there are parts of it--the death of Steve Burnside, for example, or his relationship with Jill--that just aren't his story to tell.

The version he gives Sheva is as close to complete as he can get it: the STARS, the old days in Raccoon City, the mansion incident and everything it led to. There's Claire, and Rockfort Island; Alexia Ashford and her dream of the world as her personal ant colony; Wesker's sudden resurrection and the lack of sense it made until years later, reading the files Excella had left scattered throughout the cargo ship; and so on.

Sheva's a good audience, asking all the right questions to move him along, but after a while, he's not talking to her so much as he's just getting it all out of his head.

Which, he figures later, might've been part of the reason she asked.

* * *

They ran out of Scotch a couple of hours ago, and Sheva abused her rank to have a corporal fetch them some more. He brought them bourbon instead, which annoys her, but she's drinking it. It's Kijuju; the selection was limited even before the infection.

The camp's fallen quiet around them, aside from occasional murmured conversation from the dozen guys on watch. It's about four in the morning. Sheva's stretched out on her bunk, utterly relaxed, her bare feet propped up on the footboard and one hand resting on the span of exposed skin between her shirt's hem and her waistband. She stares at the ceiling as she listens, her eyes half-shut.

"I kept my eyes open after that," Chris says. He's not drunk, but he's had enough that the world's got a warm glow to it, and words come easier than they usually do. "It didn't do me much good, though. There was always something a little more important than hunting down rumors, some business that needed to be handled..."

"Why didn't you take some time off?" Sheva asks. She tilts her head just far enough to the side to make eye contact with him. Her accent's thicker than usual. "You have contacts outside the BSAA, like Kennedy, and maybe even Wong."

Chris pours some more bourbon into his tumbler, then adds a little bottled water. "I could come up with a lot of different reasons why I didn't," he says, "but what it comes down to is that I was afraid. If I'd taken leave to track Jill down, and then I either didn't find her at all or discovered she actually was dead, I don't think I'd have been able to come back."

Sheva props herself up on one elbow to look at him.

"I know how people see me," Chris says, "like I'm some crusader for the cause, but I was tired of it all. It would've been like losing her again, and that would've been it. I'd have turned in my badge."

"What would you have done, if not this?"

"No idea," he says. "I'd like to think I'd have bought or built a cabin somewhere clean and quiet, on a river, and gotten myself a big friendly dog. Spend my nights by the fireplace, eat fresh fish every day. I used to dream about that when I was younger."

"It does sound nice."

"Yeah, but it wouldn't last. There's too much left to do, and there always will be. It's just a dream." Chris drinks some bourbon. "What about you? What would you do, if not this?"

Sheva lets herself drop back onto the bed and laughs. "Oh, Lord. When I say this, I want you to remember that I didn't laugh at your 'old man of the woods' bit."

"Can do."

"Go back to school, get my doctorate. English literature."

Chris puts a hand over his mouth and she throws her pillow at him. It misses and hits the closed door.

"No, I can see that," he says. "Dr. Alomar."

"I loved college," Sheva says. "Loved it. I just wanted this more. If they fired me tomorrow, I'd be applying to universities by sundown."

"You wouldn't be bored?"

"People retire from the military every day and never look back. I'd like to think I could be one of them." Sheva slides off the bed, walks three steps on her knees, and takes the bottle of bourbon off the lid of the footlocker. "I might do that yet, but for now..."

"Yeah."

She tips some bourbon into both tumblers and holds her own up. He taps his glass against hers.

"It's nice," Sheva says, "to know there'll be a future."


	26. Reconstruction

"You're leaving just ahead of the politics," Josh says.

"Oh?"

"Most of the foreign workers and many of the natives were killed or infected, including most of the local militias." His hands are at perfect ten and two on the steering wheel. "The KAZ has no government at all right now. We find some survivors every few days, but not many, and none so far are members of the Ndipaya."

"Yeah, I heard about that. Doesn't sound like there'd be enough people left for much in the way of polit--" Chris goes through a process of free association while he's speaking: the plains passing by outside the jeep's window remind him of that hell-for-leather drive to catch up with Delta Team, which led them to finding Josh at... "--right. The oil fields and the mines. Nobody owns them anymore."

"Yes," Josh says. "Tricell bribed the Ndipaya to allow the oil refinery's construction, but never had a proper legal claim to the land. I bring this up because we need negotiators here, and perhaps some additional non-combat personnel. There are more foreigners arriving every day, hoping to maneuver themselves into a position where they can benefit from Kijiju's resources. My teams are already stretched thin from fighting the few packs of Majini left alive in the marshland, and from guarding the old Umbrella facility. Many of them are scheduled for rotation back to their original posts within the next few weeks. Soon, something must give."

"You know, I'm never going to get used to that."

"Hm?"

"The way you and Sheva can both just take shit like that on board without flinching. They're damn near grave robbers, Josh."

Josh smiles without real humor. "We are Africans, my friend. If we allowed ourselves to get angry over every atrocity we saw, there would be no time left to do something about them."

Chris shakes his head.

"If I'm forced to deal with another oil company representative, however, I may throw him to the crocodiles."

"Right." Chris folds his arms. "I could probably get O'Brian out here. If he isn't available, he'd know somebody who'd be good for the job. Best I've got for you right now."

"Ah, Clive. Yes, that sounds ideal. He has the sort of mind this requires."

They're approaching the airstrip. There's a single-engine plane there with a local pilot behind the stick, a middle-aged guy from Kenya who speaks almost no English but thinks absolutely everything is funny. It's not a fun flight or a reliable aircraft, but it'll get Chris to Casablanca and his connecting flight to London. Or it should. It'd be just his luck, Chris thinks, after the life he's led and the things he's lived through, if he died in a simple plane crash.

"Off the subject," Josh says.

"Yeah?"

"You're aware that Sheva is my little sister in all but blood."

Chris glances at him, but Josh is focused on the road. "Yeah?"

"And I know you have a sister of your own, so you understand my impulse."

"We were just talking, Josh. She wanted to know about--" Chris trails off. "Wait a minute. Seriously?"

Josh laughs.

Chris shakes his head. He's about to say he had no idea, but then he remembers Casablanca. "I'll talk to her when I can."

"You should, I think."

"You're okay with this?"

Josh pauses to park the jeep near the airstrip's makeshift runway. "Sheva is a grown woman. Her choices are her own, and I know you're an honorable man. That said, what would you say in my situation?"

"Same thing I told Claire's first boyfriend. Hurt her and I'll break your legs."

"Then there you are." Josh offers his hand, and Chris shakes it. "Enjoy your flight."

* * *

The job being what it is, however, he doesn't have the chance to meet with Sheva for several weeks.

The KAZ and its reorganization reaches the international newswires a few days after Chris gets back to the BSAA offices in London. By the time he leaves again, to Rome to assist with the investigation into Tricell, it's become an ongoing controversy. Most outside observers can tell that China, India, and the U.S. are all attempting to seize influence within the region, if not outright control, and a lot of television's finest talking heads are muttering darkly about neoimperialism.

Josh becomes the public face of the BSAA's operations in Kijuju, smiling and photogenic in his BDUs or in sharp blue suits. He is even-tempered, intelligent, and articulate, and he is on television every six hours so he can politely call yet another politician an asshole. It's obviously O'Brian's influence, or that of someone O'Brian picked, and it works; recruitment in Africa goes up, global interest in the BSAA climbs a few points, and public opinion rapidly shifts in the BSAA and Kijuju's favor.

Chris watches it happen on his phone while he's sitting in Rome, bored out of his skull. He's here to make sure that nobody takes a shot at the forensic accountants while they're unraveling Excella's financials. By the end of the first month, he almost wishes someone would.

Excella Gionne's family's money comes from their import/export business, and resources from both that and several divisions of Tricell have been used to confuse the money trail, which goes straight back to Ricardo Irving's arms dealing, and from him to Wesker. It's all quite obvious in retrospect, as the moment she can be conclusively linked to Wesker is also the moment where departments under her direct supervision started coming up with some spectacular new discoveries out of nowhere, but proving it in court is another matter.

Tricell's lawyers are doing their best to portray Excella as the lone bad apple in the barrel, but with every day that goes by without the discovery of a surviving Ndipaya tribesman, it looks more and more like the company is responsible for a successful ethnic cleansing. It's a public relations nightmare and the company's stock cratered six weeks ago. Its only real hope for survival is to prove its innocence.

It's tempting to not care about this, since Chris is naturally inclined to distrust any business that's larger than a hot dog stand, but Tricell's the last big dog in the GPC and that means it indirectly provides the bulk of the BSAA's funding. It's exactly the kind of irony he'd rather not deal with on a personal level; he started out in this business by chasing a corporation, he continued chasing corporations well into his thirties, and now he has to help save one. The alternatives are either a massive budget cut that would force them to close at least two branches of the BSAA or holding a really fucking big bake sale.

Jill emails him every couple of days. Each message is little more than proof of life, and Chris saves each one and responds in kind.


	27. Six Strings

A month later, he's just gotten back to the main office in London when someone knocks on his door. Chris looks up and it's Sheva, wearing khakis, a lavender tank top, and a light leather jacket. She lets herself in and shuts the door behind her.

"Captain," she says.

"Lieutenant," Chris says. "What brings you here?"

"Josh finally let me switch assignments," she says. "I'm here for a briefing."

Sheva's about to say something else, but then she walks across the room and picks up a framed photo from the top of Chris's file cabinet. It's a gift from Claire, who'd kept a copy in her scrapbook: an old group shot of the STARS, taken right before Rebecca joined the team, with the whole roster lined up in front of Vickers's helicopter.

"I'm surprised you display this," she says, and sets it back down.

"Why, because Wesker's in it?"

"Exactly."

"I've thought about cutting him out of the picture, but every time, I decide against it." Chris leans back in his chair and folds his hands on his stomach. "I've got a lot of good memories from that point in my life. There's no point in pretending he never existed at all."

"Mm." Sheva sits down in one of his client chairs. "I'm glad I caught you. I wasn't sure I would."

"You almost didn't. I'm heading to the U.S. in a couple of days to interview recruits."

She nods. "It's hard to believe you're switching over to squad leader. I think people were hoping I was here to talk you out of it."

Chris shrugs. "I was never a great investigator."

"Oh, of course. You're terrible, but we never said anything. It was just so cute that you were trying."

"I get by, but it's not really what I'm good at. At the end of the day, I'm a soldier, not a detective." He decides to go for broke. "Hell, I can't tell when women are interested in me."

She smiles. "Ah. Josh spoke to you."

"It was more of a threat."

Sheva rolls her eyes. "Of course it was. I knew he was up to something when he volunteered to drive you to the airstrip."

"I have to apologize, I guess," Chris says. "After we got Wesker, back in Casablanca--"

"No, no, don't worry about it." She holds up one hand. "Truth to tell, I'm glad nothing happened. I wasn't in the best shape."

"You seemed fine."

"I wasn't." Sheva purses her lips. "I've read your report. You didn't mention what happened in the plane."

Much of the fight with Wesker is a blur, the finer details lost behind adrenaline, pain, and blind rage, but that's one thing Chris remembers in vivid detail: Sheva's face as she decided to let herself and Wesker fall.

"I don't think that's anyone else's business," Chris says finally.

"Thank you for that." Sheva folds her arms under her breasts, hugging herself. "It hit me all at once that night. Not that I'd almost died, of course. That's nothing new. It was how easily I'd made the decision. To come that close to suicide, for whatever reason..." She pauses, searching for words, then lets it stand.

"I understand."

"So yes, I'm glad you turned me down that night. I would've regretted it, I think."

Chris nods.

"Now, on the other hand, I know exactly what I'm doing. Care to grab a drink later?"

He saw it coming and it still catches him off-guard. "You don't think that'll cause problems?"

"What, professionally? Hardly." Sheva gives him a funny look. "Are you trying to talk yourself out of this?"

That's exactly what he's doing and he doesn't want to admit it. Chris pauses, grasping for words, and finally holds both hands up, palms out. "Okay, you know what? I surrender. Six o'clock?"

"Of course. You'll have to pick the bar. This is only my second time in this city."

"Sure. I know a good place."

"Excellent."

She smiles like she's just caught a canary.

* * *

"All right," Sheva says, "ground rules."

"I'm listening."

"We don't talk about work. At all. No bioterrorism allowed."

Chris drinks some beer and thinks about it, then shakes his head and laughs. "I just realized--"

"I figured."

"Jesus. It's got to have been weeks since I had a conversation that wasn't at least related to the job."

Sheva eats the cherry out of her martini and points at him with the little plastic sword. "Exactly. You can't be all business, all the time. It's just not healthy."

"It did me fine for years."

"Oh, it did not. You said it yourself. You were on the verge of burning out completely."

"That was--" Chris stops himself and rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "Arguing with you is completely pointless, isn't it."

"Only when I'm right," Sheva says, "which I am. C'mon. You're taking the night off. What would you do for fun?"

Chris thinks about it. He finishes his beer and holds up the empty bottle so the waitress can see it. She hustles over with another longneck, and Sheva covers the top of her glass with one hand. The waitress nods and leaves.

"For years," Chris says finally, "when I had a night off, I'd grab some takeout, then work out until I was tired enough that I'd go right to sleep. I'd wake up, eat breakfast, and go into the office. That's... about it."

"That is the saddest thing I've ever heard."

"Yeah, I know."

Sheva looks at him thoughtfully, then finishes her martini and sets the glass down. "C'mon. Let's go out."

"And do...?"

"We're in London. I want to see it and I bet you never have."

Chris has lived in the city for almost seven years but has always treated London as the place where the job was, interchangeable with anywhere else. His knowledge of London is limited to narrow corridors between his apartment, the BSAA's office, and Heathrow; the only reason he knows about this bar is because it was one of a few places that Jill liked. This is something that has not occurred to him before now.

"All right," Chris says, and digs out some money to leave on the table. "Lead the way."

* * *

There was a guy he used to be, a long time ago:

Chris liked classic rock and motorcycles. He'd have driven a classic Chevy or Mustang, but those things are money pits and he was on a cop's salary, so he settled for a pickup truck. He played the guitar, badly, and intended to add onto his dad's gun collection. He'd always loved fishing, and not in the sense that it was an excuse to sit around and drink in quiet places for most of a weekend; Chris went fishing to catch some goddamn fish and was annoyed if he didn't.

Most of that old life got packed into a storage locker in Raccoon City right before he left for Europe, with the exception of a couple of things he'd forgotten at the STARS office. Chris hadn't realized that it was all gone until months after the fact, in a conversation with Barry, and by then it had seemed irrelevant. Umbrella was going to destroy the planet sooner or later; he wasn't about to bitch because they'd also vaporized his guitar.

He hasn't thought about that in years, but he's thinking about it now.

Sheva's dragged him all over London at this point and he's yet to do much more than watch her shop. She's more like him than she's willing to admit and that means she barely touches her paycheck, so she's free to go a little nuts. She hit the last bookstore they visited like a natural disaster.

Right now she's across the store sorting through rack after rack of vinyl records and Chris is looking at an electric guitar hung up on the wall. He thinks it might be overpriced and it comes with an amplifier that's barely better than a baby monitor, but it's tempting.

"D'you play?" Sheva asks.

Chris half-turns and she's still looking at records, with a couple pulled out and stacked up next to her. He recognizes Parliament's _Mothership Collection_ and nods in approval.

"Used to," Chris says. "Haven't in years."

He puts a hand on it and looks at the clerk, who's standing behind the counter. She shrugs, so Chris takes the guitar off the wall. It's out of tune, but he's surprised to find he still remembers the opening chords to "Day Tripper," which he repeats a couple of times.

Chris looks up and Sheva's smiling quietly to herself.

"If you don't buy it," she says, "I will."

He rolls his eyes at her, but it's good-natured, and Chris digs out his wallet.

* * *

It turns out, when he looks, that there are entire archives of guitar tabulature on the Internet. He's surprised by this and it makes him feel very old.

Chris sits in his apartment with the guitar across his lap, reading notes off his computer screen. He already knows that he's going to have to replace this guitar sooner or later. It really is a piece of crap he shouldn't have bought in the first place, some no-name Chinese knockoff made to be displayed, and it makes him miss the guitar he left at his desk in the STARS office.

It's what he's got right now, though, and as he picks out the chords to "Another One Bites The Dust," Chris smiles.


	28. Acclimation

"As far as I can tell, it's the T-Virus," Sheva says. "No fancy hybrid strain, either."

Chris glances down at the corpse. It's nearly impossible to tell anything about it other than it had once been human. Really old zombies can get this way; rot, dehydration, and time have worn it down to what isn't much more than a wet skeleton. Both he and Sheva have vapor-rub smeared on their upper lips or they wouldn't be able to get this close to it without retching.

"Yeah, I've seen these before," he says, and goes back to watching their surroundings. Zombies aren't supposed to be sneaky but sometimes, regardless, they are. Protocol says to not get distracted.

They're standing about a mile outside a small town in Nebraska called Blackwood, population fifteen hundred, give or take a few dozen undocumented workers. Sheva's been here for two days--she's a field agent now, and her actual home office is more of a formality than anything that determines where she's assigned--and arrived right as a reported zombie sighting turned into a documentable outbreak. Chris just got here.

"Not quite like this one," Sheva says, and nudges the dead zombie's arm with the muzzle of her shotgun. "See this?"

Chris hadn't, and kneels to take a closer look. There's a small metallic bracelet around the zombie's wrist. He pulls on a latex glove and turns over the zombie's arm to reveal it's keeping a small black plastic box attached to the zombie's arm.

"What is this? A tracking beacon?"

"There's one of those on every zombie I've seen so far," Sheva says. She stands up and takes the guard position. "We were too busy evacuating the civilians to do much more than take note of it."

"Where's your partner?"

"She got bit," Sheva says. "Some Daylight's being flown in."

Chris nods. "This is a standard sweep and clear from here. I'm surprised you called for backup."

"I missed you," Sheva says, "and wanted to see you."

He frowns at her. Sheva chuckles.

"You know as well as I do that these things can complicate themselves," Sheva says. "Better safe than sorry, and I knew you were in the time zone."

"Probably a good call," Chris says. "Won't make awful on-the-job training, either."

"You brought some rookies?"

"Yeah. They're getting vaccinated against the T-Virus now. This is their chance to see what we're up against."

He takes his knife out and, with a grimace, chops off the zombie's hand at the wrist. The bracelet slides off and he puts it in a plastic evidence bag.

"Let's get this to the tech people," Chris says, "and then we can take care of business."

* * *

Sometimes operations go exactly as they should.

None of the rookies freeze up or have flashbacks or injure themselves. There are no friendly-fire incidents. The local law enforcement stays back and maintains a perimeter just like they were told. None of them grab shotguns and charge into town to cover themselves in glory. There are parts of America Chris has worked in where the BSAA is more of a concern to the civilians than the bioweapons are, due to their ties to the United Nations and thus their perceived threat to American sovereignty, but if the citizens of Blackwood share that opinion they're smart enough to not worry about it for the moment. They're well-armed, relatively calm considering the situation, and perfectly willing to listen to someone who's introduced to them as an expert.

It's a slow process, block by block, making noise, covering all directions in a sort of phalanx formation, and waiting for the zombies to come to them. The carriers come at them from alleyways and around blind corners; they emerge from storefronts and from underneath cars. One falls off a roof, its brain too far gone to recognize its prey is thirty feet below it, and disintegrates on contact with the sidewalk. Each zombie that appears is dealt with quickly and efficiently, Chris directing careful aimed fire from each rookie in turn, and his squad doesn't stop until they're on the other side of the city limits. Then they turn back and do it again, going house by house until they can't find anything moving in this town except themselves.

They manage to pick up twelve civilians who missed the initial evacuation order and bring out twenty-nine wounded. Of the latter, three succumb to the virus before they can reach medical care. The death toll for the outbreak ends up at three hundred twelve zombies and thirty dead civilians with three reported missing. Sheva's partner is their only serious casualty, and the Daylight reaches her in time.

This is the kind of math the BSAA deals in. They moved fast and did everything right and they "only" lost thirty people. It's a fraction of their usual casualty allowance, which starts at forty percent for bioterror operations, and most officers in the BSAA would count this as a triumphant win.

Chris does not.

* * *

"D'you think anyone would mind," Sheva whispers, "if we dropped a grenade in through the window and called it a night?"

That gets a couple of low chuckles from the rookies. They like her; she's the fun one.

"I'm tempted," Chris says, "but I'd like to find out who they are. Pulanski, Rogers. You're with me."

They peel off with him and make for the trailer's door. They're both ex-SWAT and know forced entry procedures; Chris directs them silently with hand gestures and they take up positions. He takes point without thinking about it, signals a three-count, and they bust the door down just as if they trained together for this scenario.

Four seconds later, Chris is pointing an assault shotgun at three men in labcoats, one of whom just spilled hot coffee all over himself. The trailer's a retrofitted mobile home and they're sitting at three separate consoles. From here, Chris can see a radar array and what looks like a satellite uplink. If he didn't already have the tracking data from the zombies' beacons, this would be probable cause by itself.

"BSAA," he says. "You're under arrest."

One of the guys in labcoats, a skinny white kid with Buddy Holly glasses and a blond ponytail, gets a look of quiet resignation. Chris has gotten pretty good at spotting the guys who'll try to commit suicide by cop, so he waits just long enough for the man to reach for what Chris assumes is a holstered pistol on the back of his belt. Then Chris takes one big step across the trailer--nobody ever expects that someone Chris's size is as fast as he is--and hits the man in the face with the stock of his shotgun. The man's nose breaks and he drops.

"Gun," he says calmly, and takes the pistol off the guy.

One of the rookies lets out a low, appreciative whistle.

* * *

"They're independent operators," Sheva says, and sits down next to Chris. "One of them grew up here and hated the place. Half revenge attack, half experiment. Apparently there are still researchers who haven't let go of the idea of directly weaponizing the T-Virus."

Chris shakes his head. "Where'd they get the carriers?"

"A supplier out of eastern Europe, apparently. We're running dental records on the zombies to try to figure out more. One more bastard for the list, I suppose."

Chris nods. He really wants to have words with this person.

Sheva stretches out her back. "Why aren't you out with your team?"

"I was, for a little while. I let some of the locals buy me a couple of beers. Makes them feel better."

Sheva shakes her head. "If you really want to have the sort of team rapport that Josh builds, you need to be there with your people. You can't disappear off to brood whenever you don't have something to fight."

Chris thinks about that for a while, then nods. "I guess I should've known that, huh."

"You're adjusting," Sheva says. "You've worked alone for a while and you were never in the squads until now. Besides, I can tell you're off to a good start."

He nods.

"Although I understand you more now, I think, than I did."

"How's that?"

"People treat me differently, after Kijuju," she says. "You seemed so uncomfortable when we first met, and now I see why. They act as if you and I did it all ourselves without support, like they've forgotten the soldiers we lost. It's..." She pauses for a moment. "...awkward." It's not really the word she wants.

"Everyone wants the story to have a hero, even if you didn't do anything more heroic than surviving. They always have. Probably always will."

"Why?"

"I'll let you know if I figure it out. Movies, probably."

They're quiet for a while then, looking out across the camp. Rescue workers and volunteers have arrived from the next couple of counties to help with the refugee effort, and there's a BSAA cleanup crew scheduled to show up tomorrow, ready to spray down half the city with a high-pressure stream of liquid antivirals. Blackwood's going to be a tent village for a while and at least the city center will need to be torn down and rebuilt. There's a long road ahead.

But yeah, Chris says to himself, they're almost all alive. That's something.

"All right," Chris says to Sheva. "Let's go get a drink."


End file.
